Life & Wisdom Quote by Jack Prelutsky

Prelutsky’s line lands with a quiet kind of authority: not the grand claim that poetry redeems the world, but the simpler insistence that it’s a necessary tool for living. “We all need ways” frames expression as infrastructure, not ornament. It implies that without outlets, feelings and ideas don’t just vanish; they back up, distort, leak out sideways. In that sense, the sentence is less a celebration of art than a practical defense of it.

The phrasing also sidesteps the usual hierarchy that crowns poetry as the highest form of expression. Prelutsky doesn’t argue poetry is better than music, sport, or conversation. He calls it “one of mine,” a modest possessive that makes the point more democratic: everyone has their channel, and judging someone’s chosen form is missing the point. That humility is strategic. Coming from a poet best known for children’s verse, it pushes back against the cultural reflex to treat kid-facing work as lesser or merely cute. His subtext is that playfulness can be serious, and that imagination is a legitimate emotional technology.

Context matters here. Prelutsky wrote for readers still learning how to name what they feel, and for adults who often forget they once needed that training. The line invites both groups to see expression as a habit worth cultivating. It’s an argument for creative practice as self-knowledge, delivered without the self-importance that often chases poetry away from the people who might actually need it.