{ "type": "quote", "site": { "name": "Leafy Quotes", "language": "en", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com" }, "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/see-the-whole", "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/see-the-whole.json", "markdown": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/see-the-whole.md", "id": "7674b6fd-bb35-43d7-9d3f-dd4f4d8da7be", "slug": "see-the-whole", "text": "See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures.", "language": "en", "author": { "name": "Jack Kerouac", "slug": "jack-kerouac", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac" }, "book": { "title": "The Dharma Bums", "slug": "the-dharma-bums", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums" }, "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "consumerism", "slug": "consumerism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/consumerism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Dharma_Bums", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:31", "more_from_book": [ { "id": "da7a06e0-e23b-4f4d-861d-2dd5e8632233", "slug": "every-time-i-felt", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/every-time-i-felt", "text": "Every time I felt bored I rolled another cigarette out of my can of Prince Albert; there's nothing better in the world than a roll-your-own deeply enjoyed without hurry.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "pleasure", "slug": "pleasure", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/pleasure" }, { "name": "addiction", "slug": "addiction", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/addiction" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Dharma_Bums", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:31" }, { "id": "d5b73c73-280d-4a72-8b41-a23e66b94e4c", "slug": "when-i-was", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/when-i-was", "text": "When I was a little kid in Oregon I didn't feel that I was an American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values but and when I discovered Buddhism and all I suddenly felt that I had lived in a previous lifetime innumerable ages ago and now because of faults and sins in that lifetime I was being degraded to a more grievous domain of existence and my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "freedom", "slug": "freedom", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/freedom" }, { "name": "America", "slug": "america", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/america" }, { "name": "Buddhism", "slug": "buddhism", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/buddhism" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Dharma_Bums", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:31" }, { "id": "d583277a-5417-44bf-adc6-da7b4646233f", "slug": "i-felt-like", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/the-dharma-bums/i-felt-like", "text": "I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.", "language": "en", "character": null, "chapter": null, "chapter_parent": null, "page": null, "verified": false, "original": null, "other_languages": [], "topics": [ { "name": "memory", "slug": "memory", "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/memory" } ], "source": { "name": "Wikiquote", "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jack_Kerouac#The_Dharma_Bums_(1958)", "license": { "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0", "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" } }, "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:41:31" } ] }