“…re-examine all you have been told…”
Documented source
Every quote here is traced to a documented source. How we verify →
In full
The line is one clause in a single long sentence — a list of instructions. The complete sentence:
This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.
About this line
Whitman printed the first Leaves of Grass himself in 1855 — 795 copies, no author name on the title page, a preface running twelve pages with no title and no signature. This clause sits inside one enormous sentence of instructions: love the earth, despise riches, hate tyrants, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown. He put re-examining what you’ve been told between reading outdoors and dismissing whatever insults your soul — an ordinary daily practice, filed among the others. He dropped the preface from later editions and never restored it.
Why we carry this line
I went looking for a real Whitman line after chasing the one from the dart scene in Ted Lasso and finding nothing behind it. It’s the same instinct as Nullius in Verba — take nobody’s word for it. Re-examine everything, no matter the source.
