Carl Sandburg Quotes
If it were possible to talk with that great, good man, he would probably say that he is perfectly willing that his face is to be placed on the cheapest and most common coin in the country. Follow the travels of the penny and you find it stops at many cottages and few mansions. ... The common, homely face of ‘Honest Abe’ will look good on the penny, the coin of the common folk from whom he came and to whom he belongs.
Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967, Poet and political biographer, Reference to the fact the Abraham Lincoln’s visage appears on America’s least valuable and most plentiful coin, The Milwaukee Daily News
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
The Lincoln Penny was first minted at that time. By 2007, half a trillion Lincoln pennies have been minted and distributed. It is the most common coin in America and perhaps the world.
Carl August Sandburg (January 6, 1878 – July 22, 1967) was an American poet, biographer, journalist, and editor. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. During his lifetime, Sandburg was widely regarded as "a major figure in contemporary literature", especially for volumes of his collected verse, including Chicago Poems (1916), Cornhuskers (1918), and Smoke and Steel (1920). He enjoyed "unrivaled appeal as a poet in his day, perhaps because the breadth of his experiences connected him with so many strands of American life", and at his death in 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson observed that "Carl Sandburg was more than the voice of America, more than the poet of its strength and genius. He was America."
