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Quotes by John Steinbeck

US novelist (1902 - 1968)

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

After the bare requisites of living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone, or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who scribbles on a wall to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.

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

Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.

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.

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

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

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.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

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.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thoughts or action we should remember our dying and try so to live, that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

What a joy, that literacy is no longer prima facie evidence of treason.

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?

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

No one wants advice, only collaboration.

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