Beat Generation Quotes

• The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.

  John Clellon Holmes

  Different Nationalities, People, Generations

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• But yet, but yet, woe, woe unto those who think that the Beat Generation means crime, delinquency, immorality, amorality ... woe unto those who attack it on the grounds that they simply don't understand history and the yearning of human souls ... woe in fact unto those who make evil movies about the Beat Generation where innocent housewives are raped by beatniks! ... woe unto those who spit on the Beat Generation, the wind'll blow it back.

  Jack Kerouac

  Mean, Thinking, Blow

  64 Copy quote

• Woe to those who spit on the beat generation, the wind will blow it back.

  Bill Vaughan

  Blow, Wind, Enemy

  61 Copy quote

• John Clellon Holmes... and I were sitting around trying to think up the meaning of the Lost Generation and the subsequent existentialism and I said 'You know John, this is really a beat generation'; and he leapt up and said, 'That's it, that's right!'

  Jack Kerouac

  Thinking, Trying, Generations

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

  Jack Kerouac

  Inspirational, Friends, Horse

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

  146 Copy quote

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• I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Men, Giving

  Jack Kerouac (2016). “The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings”, p.220, Library of America

  55 Copy quote

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• Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  103 Copy quote

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• I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

  Jack Kerouac

  Thinking, Confusion, Confusing

  Jack Kerouac (1957). “On the Road”, Viking Press

  38 Copy quote

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• The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way.

  Jack Kerouac

  Beautiful, Hipster, Crazy

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

  19 Copy quote

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• Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

  Jack Kerouac

  Life, Stars, Eye

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1996). “Selected letters, 1940-1956”, Penguin Paperbacks

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• Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?

  Jack Kerouac

  Wake Up

  Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.199, Penguin

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• Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

  William S. Burroughs

  Sex, Hippie, Coffee

  The Adding Machine "Remembering Jack Kerouac" (1985)

  15 Copy quote

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• Because the only people for me are the mad ones.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hippie, Yawning, People

  On the Road pt. 1, ch. 1 (1957)

  23 Copy quote

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• I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

  Allen Ginsberg

  Insanity, Mind, Naked

  "Howl" l. 1 (1956)

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• He had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Travel, Stars

  "On the Road".

  94 Copy quote

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• My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Failure, Passion

  18 Copy quote

• This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti

  Nice, Ideas, Today

  "First draft of Kerouac's Beat bible, 'On the Road,' arrives in San Francisco, the very city it sanctified" by Delfin Vigil, www.sfgate.com. January 18, 2006.

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• And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks!

  Jack Kerouac

  Tanks, Hippo

  William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac (2009). “And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks”, p.185, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The bartenders are the regular band of Jack, and the heavenly drummer who looks up to the sky with blue eyes, with a beard, is wailing beer-caps of bottles and jamming on the cash register and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, its béat, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown.

  Jack Kerouac

  Heart, Eye, Beer

  Jack Kerouac (2012). “Desolation Angels”, p.194, Penguin UK

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• I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

  Jack Kerouac

  Life, Running, Stars

  Jack Kerouac (1957). “On the Road”, Viking Press

  23 Copy quote

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• They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

  Jack Kerouac

  Hipster, Men, America

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.153, Penguin

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• It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.

  Jack Kerouac

  Mean, Generations, Use

  13 Copy quote

• Kerouac was the cowboy that inspired the whole Beat Generation, and highlighted and put the spotlight on all of these minds that didn't really know what they were doing at the time, but accomplished something much bigger than what they ever foresaw.

  Garrett Hedlund

  Cowboy, Mind, Generations

  "Garrett Hedlund Exclusive Interview TRON: LEGACY; Plus an ON THE ROAD Update". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. September 27, 2010.

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• The beat generation is a coffeehouse full of people expectantly looking at their watches waiting for the beat generation to come on.

  Mort Sahl

  People, Waiting, Watches

  7 Copy quote

• Like many nonconformist and beat generation writers, William S. Burroughs takes the outcasts of society as his theme.

  William S. Burroughs

  Generations, Outcast, Beats

  4 Copy quote