John Steinbeck - People Quotes

65 Sourced Quotes

View all John Steinbeck Quotes
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
People who are most afraid of their dreams convince themselves they don't dream at all.

John Steinbeck
I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.

John Steinbeck
And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.

John Steinbeck
I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.

John Steinbeck
You must not expect to find that people understand what they do.

John Steinbeck
I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.

John Steinbeck
They must be real people. And this means that every word in every line of speech must be accurate and full of some kind of meaning which stretches not only forward in the book but stems from before in the book.

John Steinbeck
A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory

John Steinbeck
A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.

John Steinbeck
He learned that when people are very poor they still have something to give and the impulse to give it.

John Steinbeck
You're getting well,' Samuel said. 'Some people think it's an insult to the glory of their sickness to get well. But the time poultice is no respecter of glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.

John Steinbeck
Woody is just Woody. Thousands of people do not know he has any other name. He is just a voice and a guitar. He sings the songs of a people and I suspect that he is, in a way, that people. Harsh voiced and nasal, his guitar hanging like a tire iron on a rusty rim, there is nothing sweet about Woody, and there is nothing sweet about the songs he sings. But there is something more important for those who will listen. There is the will of the people to endure and fight against oppression. I think we call this the American spirit.

John Steinbeck
And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.

John Steinbeck
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.

John Steinbeck
That's why I'm talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.

John Steinbeck
The utter insanity of living in a place like this doesn't occur to the 9,000,000 people who inhabit New York. Except for visits I think I shall not be here any more as a resident.

John Steinbeck
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.

John Steinbeck
My whole work drive has been aimed at making people understand each other...

John Steinbeck
They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)

John Steinbeck
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.

John Steinbeck
And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.

John Steinbeck
Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.

John Steinbeck
The people in flight from the terror behind-strange things happen to them, some bitterly cruel and some so beautiful that the faith is refired forever.

John Steinbeck
People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments...

John Steinbeck
A book is somehow sacred. A dictator can kill and maim people, can sink to any kind of tyranny and only be hated, but when books are burned the ultimate in tyranny has happened. This we cannot forgive.

John Steinbeck
Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.' 'We take a beatin' all the time.' 'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'.

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 day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.

John Steinbeck