John Steinbeck Quotes

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

The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.

A great lasting love is made of sacrifice, forgiveness, and understanding.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

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.

I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that they are as few as there are any other great artists.

Dreams are the bitter sweet realizations of our deepest desires.

I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.

There are times when a man has to fight, and there are times when he must accept that his fate has been sealed.

John Steinbeck Quotes part 2

The writer must write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

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.

Stupidity, ignorance, and belligerence together are stronger than intelligence alone.

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

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

Until a person gets their heart broken, they have no idea what they’re capable of.

Time tends to flatten out our experiences.

Man himself is a danger to himself.

The badge of courage is an increasingly rare and disavowed one.

Time operates as a filter… it leaves all behind what holds no meaning, or what means nothing to us anymore.

The trade unions must remember that the greatest power is in the masses of people. Without them, neither the unions nor democracy itself can survive.

The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

It has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education, so little stress is laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought — that is to be educated.

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.

There is no greater thing than a good man who has served well, and honorably.

The writer must be a kind of peeping Tom of the mind’s hayloft.

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

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.

It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been had it never shone.

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

I believe in faith, and I believe in fighting. And I believe in love, too.

No one wants advice — only corroboration.

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

Man is the only kind of varmint that sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.

The writer must write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the next, and the schoolmasters of ever afterward.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that they are as few as there are any other great artists.

I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I’ve lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.

No one wants advice—only corroboration.

We do not take a trip; a trip takes us.

The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.

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

Pain was not a foreign land, as so many despairing lovers imaginersr. It was a place John Steinbeck knew well.