John Steinbeck

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

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
John Steinbeck - The Winter of our Discontent, chapter 2
I know three things will never be believed-the true, the probable, and the logical.
John Steinbeck - The Moon is Down
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 - East of Eden
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 - The Winter of our Discontent
Most people live ninety percent in the past, seven percent in the present, and that only leaves three percent for the future.

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.
John Steinbeck - The Winter of our Discontent
Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.
John Steinbeck - The Pastures of Heaven, p 56
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.

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 - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.
John Steinbeck - East of Eden, Chapter 13, Part II
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
John Steinbeck - The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
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 - The Grapes of Wrath
In the hearts and minds of the people, the grapes of wrath were growing heavy for the vintage.

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

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

- John Steinbeck