John Steinbeck Quotes

510 Sourced Quotes

Give a critic an inch, he'll write a play.

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
If you're in trouble or hurt or need, go to poor people. They're the only ones that'll help, the only ones.

John Steinbeck
Time is the only critic without ambition.

John Steinbeck
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

John Steinbeck
The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.

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 business and in politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind-but he must get there first.

John Steinbeck
And finally, in our time a beard is the one thing that a woman cannot do better than a man, or if she can her success is assured only in a circus.

John Steinbeck
There is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter.

John Steinbeck
She had not prayed directly for the recovery of the baby, she had prayed that they might find a pearl with which to hire the doctor to cure the baby, for the minds of people are as unsubstantial as the mirage of the Gulf.

John Steinbeck
They's movement now. People moving. We know why, an' we know how. Movin' 'cause they got to. That's why folks always move. Movin' 'cause they want somepin better'n what they got. An' that's the on'y way they'll ever git it.

John Steinbeck
A good writer always works at the impossible.There is another kind who pulls in his horizons, drops his mind as one lowers rifle sights.

John Steinbeck
Does anyone ever know even the outer fringe of another? What are you like in there? Mary — do you hear? Who are you in there?

John Steinbeck
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.

John Steinbeck
She knew she could help him best by being silent and by being near

John Steinbeck
I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love.

John Steinbeck
This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.

John Steinbeck
The President must be greater than anyone else, but not better than anyone else. We subject him and his family to close and constant scrutiny and denounce them for things that we ourselves do every day. A Presidential slip of the tongue, a slight error in judgment — social, political, or ethical — can raise a storm of protest. We give the President more work than a man can do, more responsibility than a man should take, more pressure than a man can bear. We abuse him often and rarely praise him. We wear him out, use him up, eat him up. And with all this, Americans have a love for the President that goes beyond loyalty or party nationality; he is ours, and we exercise the right to destroy him.

John Steinbeck
The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.

John Steinbeck
All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.

John Steinbeck
I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.

John Steinbeck
There is no term comparable to green thumbs to apply to such a mechanic, but there should be. For there are men who can look, listen, tap, make an adjustment, and a machine works.

John Steinbeck
He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

John Steinbeck
When we get these thruways across the whole country, as we will and must, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing.

John Steinbeck