John Steinbeck Quotes

"As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment."
-John Steinbeck in Time quotes.

"Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass."
-John Steinbeck in Change quotes.

"The [animal rights groups] have had it all their own way. They have intimidated people, but the time has come to speak up and risk it. Who knows what the risk is?"
-John Steinbeck

"Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future."
-John Steinbeck

"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power."
-John Steinbeck

"For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost--good manners, ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and you couldn't trust a gentleman's word... Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!"
-John Steinbeck

"When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence, and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world."
-John Steinbeck

"No one wants advice, only collaboration. "
-John Steinbeck

"This I believe: That the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual."
-John Steinbeck

"In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love."
-John Steinbeck

"In the hearts and minds of the people, the grapes of wrath were growing heavy for the vintage."
-John Steinbeck

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."
-John Steinbeck in Ideas quotes.

"Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms."
-John Steinbeck

"It seems to me that man has engaged in a blind and fearful struggle out of a past he can't remember, into a future he can't forsee nor understand. And man has met and defeated every obstacle, every enemy except one. He cannot win over himself."
-John Steinbeck

"We find that after years of struggle we do not take a journey, but rather a journey takes us."
-John Steinbeck

"Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars."
-John Steinbeck

"I know this--a man got to do what he got to do."
-John Steinbeck

"It always seemed strange to me that the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, aquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and selfinterest are the traits of sucess. And while men admire the quality of the first, they love the produce of the second."
-John Steinbeck

"No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself."
-John Steinbeck

"Man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments."
-John Steinbeck

"Man is the only kind of varmint who sets his own trap, baits it, then steps on it. "
-John Steinbeck

"I know three things will never be believed-the true, the probable, and the logical."
-John Steinbeck

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."
-John Steinbeck

"The fields were fruitful and starving men moved on the roads. The granaries were full and the children of the poor grew up rachitic."
-John Steinbeck

"I have named the destroyers of nations: comfort, plenty, and security - out of which grow a bored and slothful cynicism, in which rebellion against the world as it is, and myself as I am, are submerged in listless self-satisfaction."
-John Steinbeck

"It doesn't matter that Cathy was what I have called a monster. Perhaps we can't understand Cathy, but on the other hand we are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins. And who in his mind has not probed the black water?"
-John Steinbeck

"What a joy, that literacy is no longer prima facie evidence of treason."
-John Steinbeck