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Re-examine All You Have Been Told — Whitman Phone Case — Walt Whitman — phone case — heretics — black — front — Quoteiac
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Black matte phone case: re-examine all you have been told design with Walt Whitman attribution from Leaves of Grass 1855
Quoteiac

Re-examine All You Have Been Told — Whitman Phone Case

Sale price$32.00

Eleven pages of instructions, printed before a single poem, by a man nobody had heard of. Whitman spent that preface telling readers what to do with their lives, and then spent the rest of his life dismantling it and feeding the pieces into his poems.

Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass, first edition, 1855

"…re-examine all you have been told…"

Context

You've been handed answers by people who were confident. Teachers, institutions, whatever you scrolled past this morning. Whitman's instruction is to go back through all of it — and he includes his own book in the list.

The sentence finishes: dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem. Not a suggestion to be skeptical. A condition for becoming something.

Who It's For

  • You check things yourself rather than take the first answer
  • You reach for your phone dozens of times a day and would rather see a sentence than a logo
  • The books you've read have changed what you believe, more than once

The Design

The words come down the face in four steps, each one further right than the last, like a thought working itself out rather than a slogan arriving finished. On something you pick up all day, it reads as an unfinished argument — which it is.

That refusal to line up is fukinsei, the Japanese principle of deliberate imbalance. The dots opening and closing the line mark it honestly as a fragment: more came before, more comes after.

About This Case

  • Dual-layer construction — flexible inner layer, hard polycarbonate outer shell
  • Raised edges protect the screen and camera
  • Deep black ground runs to every edge; the lines sit clear of the camera cutout
  • Wireless charging compatible — works with most Qi-enabled devices

Keep away from prolonged direct sunlight and high-alcohol liquids to preserve the design.

Walt Whitman, in Plain English

  • Born in West Hills, New York, 1819; died in Camden, New Jersey, 1892
  • Left school at eleven and learned the printing trade — he set type, chose paper, and argued with binders for the rest of his life
  • Self-published the first Leaves of Grass in 1855: a preface and twelve untitled poems. He rebuilt the book five more times over the next twenty-six years
  • Spent the Civil War years in Washington as an unpaid hospital visitor, sitting with wounded soldiers on both sides
  • Lived his last nineteen years in Camden, New Jersey, receiving visitors from three continents

More from this collection

Re-examine All You Have Been Told — Whitman T-Shirt — the same instruction, worn. See the full Walt Whitman collection.

Read: Ted Lasso's Best Quote Came From a 1986 Advice Column →

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Re-examine All You Have Been Told — Whitman Phone Case — Walt Whitman — phone case — heretics — black — front — Quoteiac
Re-examine All You Have Been Told — Whitman Phone Case Sale price$32.00