Quotes from John Steinbeck

Cand cauti inapoi cu atentie, poti gasi intotdeauna momentul de inceput al unei noi epoci, dupa care totul merge de la sine, se inlantuie.

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. You will find that is so, sir.

I believe one thing powerfully- that the only creative thing our species has is the individual, lonely mind... The group ungoverned by individual thinking is a horrible destructive principle.

No men really know about other human beings. The best you can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails.

And I get to tend the rabbits…Lennie giggled with happiness.

Well, she thought, here it is just as I knew it would be. Here was her death. Her mind flashed to see if she had forgotten anything—will made, letters burned, new underwear, plenty of food in the house for dinner. She wondered whether she had turned out the light in the back room. It was all in a second. Then she thought there might be an outside chance of survival.

Boys were stunned by the size and grandeur of the West End after their background in a one-room country school. The opulence of having a teacher for each grade made a deep impression on them. It seemed wasteful. But as is true of all humans, they were stunned for one day, admiring on the second, and on the third day could not remember very clearly ever having gone to any.

Law changes, he said, but 'got to's' go on. You got the right to do what you got to do.

The guest list, if there had been one, was a little like a census.

Up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live, but when it comes, it'll on'y be one. If I go ahead on all of 'em, it's too much.

He was proud of her wild, exploring mind.

It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.

Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all

See. Is it responsibility or blame that bothers you?" "I don't want blame." "Sometimes responsibility is worse. It doesn't carry any pleasant egotism.

By making careful preparations, by foreseeing possibilities, Doc hoped to make this party as non-lethal as possible without making it dull.

All in all it was a good firm-grounded family, permanent, and successfully planted in the Salinas Valley, not poorer than many and not richer than many either. It was a well-balanced family with its conservatives and its radicals, its dreamers and its realists. Samuel was well pleased with the fruit of his loins.

It is a hard thing to live any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.

All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn't that the evil thing wins — it never will — but that it doesn't die.

Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I've had no Eden, let alone been driven out.

A man can do a lot of damage in the church. When someone comes here, he's got his guard up. But in church a man's wide open.

Yes, it meant something." Then he said, "Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?

They have the authority of ignorance and that is something you simply cannot combat." – John Steinbeck

I come from a whole goddam family of inventors, said Will. We had ideas for breakfast. We had ideas instead of breakfast. We had so many ideas we forgot to make the money for groceries.