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Quotes by John Steinbeck

No one wants advice -- only corroboration.
– John Steinbeck
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in all 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
Once I traveled about in an old bakery wagon, double-doored rattler with a mattress on the floor, I stopped where people stopped or gathered, I listened and looked and felt, and in the process had a picture of my country the accuracy of which was impaired only by my own shortcomings.
– 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
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
– John Steinbeck
It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them.
– John Steinbeck
In the hearts and minds of the people, the grapes of wrath were growing heavy for the vintage.
– John Steinbeck
I know this--a man got to do what he got to do.
– John Steinbeck
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
– John Steinbeck
Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
– John Steinbeck
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.
– John Steinbeck
Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
– John Steinbeck
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
– 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
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
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
– John Steinbeck
Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.
– John Steinbeck
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 on the world.
– John Steinbeck
It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
– John Steinbeck
It has always seemed strange to me... 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, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
– John Steinbeck
It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
– John Steinbeck
I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
– John Steinbeck
A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
– John Steinbeck
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
– John Steinbeck