Life & Wisdom Quote by Allen Ginsberg

A line like this turns patriotism into a breakup scene, then makes the breakup political. Ginsberg’s speaker isn’t saluting a flag; he’s confronting a lover-state that has extracted everything useful and left behind a hollowed-out citizen. The pivot from the grand noun "America" to the blunt accounting of "all" and "nothing" is the trick: it’s simultaneously intimate and accusatory, a private ledger shouted in public. That collision is pure Ginsberg, where confession becomes indictment and the personal voice is weaponized against national myth.

The intent isn’t just to complain about the country; it’s to dramatize how the country manufactures exhaustion. "I’ve given you all" suggests labor, youth, belief, art, even complicity. It carries the cadence of someone who tried to participate - to be legible, loyal, productive - and discovered that the bargain was rigged. "Now I’m nothing" lands like a verdict delivered by the speaker but authored by the system: consumer capitalism, Cold War paranoia, psychiatric policing, the pressure to conform. Ginsberg writes from a mid-century America that demanded cheerfulness and punished deviation, especially for queer people and for artists who refused the sanctioned script.

What makes it work is its refusal of heroic posture. Instead of a manifesto, you get depletion. The line performs the psychic aftermath of empire: the citizen as disposable resource, the poet as canary, the self as collateral damage. It’s a lament that doubles as a charge sheet.