100 Quotes by John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck, a celebrated American author, is renowned for his ability to capture the essence of human struggles and societal challenges during the Great Depression and beyond. Born in 1902, Steinbeck's literary legacy rests on his works' vivid portrayal of the American experience. His novels often focused on marginalized communities, exploring themes of poverty, injustice, and the human spirit's resilience. Notably, "The Grapes of Wrath" stands as a seminal piece of literature, chronicling the journey of the Joad family as they migrate westward in search of a better life. Steinbeck's masterful character development and evocative prose highlighted the harsh realities faced by many during a time of economic hardship. In "Of Mice and Men," he continued his exploration of friendship and dreams amid adversity. Steinbeck's social consciousness extended to his lesser-known works like "Cannery Row," which offered a compassionate view of the downtrodden. Through his storytelling, Steinbeck provided a voice to those on the fringes of society, leaving an enduring impact on literature's ability to reflect the human condition.
John Steinbeck Quotes
To be alive at all is to have scars. (Meaning)
If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. (Meaning)
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal. (Meaning)
My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day. (Meaning)
Anything that just costs money is cheap. (Meaning)
No one wants advice - only corroboration. (Meaning)
A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ. (Meaning)
I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found. (Meaning)
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction. (Meaning)
Time is the only critic without ambition. (Meaning)
Being at ease with himself put him at ease with the world. (Meaning)
You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff (Meaning)
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. (Meaning)
A boy becomes a man when a man is needed (Meaning)
Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning. (Meaning)
I guess there are never enough books. (Meaning)
Perhaps it takes courage to raise children. (Meaning)
One can find so many pains when the rain is falling. (Meaning)
Man has a choice and it's a choice that makes him a man. (Meaning)
Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. (Meaning)
We could live offa the fatta the lan'. (Meaning)
Saints can spring from any soil. (Meaning)
What hidden, hoarded longings there are in all of us. (Meaning)
I nearly always write — just as I nearly always breathe. (Meaning)
Luck, you see, brings bitter friends. (Meaning)
I know this... a man got to do what he got to do. (Meaning)
Don't make everyone know about your sadness. (Meaning)
No one who is young is ever going to be old. (Meaning)
A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. (Meaning)
it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. (Meaning)
Socialism never took root in America. (Meaning)
Trouble with mice is you always kill 'em. (Meaning)
We think of strangers as stronger and better than we are. (Meaning)
You never oughta drink water when it ain't runnin'. (Meaning)
Guys like us got nothing to look ahead to (Meaning)
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother. (Meaning)
All we got is the family unbroke. (Meaning)
Man has become our greatest hazard, and our only hope. (Meaning)
Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. (Meaning)
A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. (Meaning)
Thou mayest rule over sin. (Meaning)
Don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
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.
The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.
When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you've got two new people.
I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.
There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.
If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.
Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.
This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
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.
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.
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.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in 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. This is what I am and what I am about.
It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
Only mediocrity escapes criticism.
I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
The last clear definite function of man — muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need — this is man.
In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen.
All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.
I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that's why.
It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.
A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil.
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.
To be alive at all is to have scars.
The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.
This I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
A man without words is a man without thought.
It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.
There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.
All great and precious things are lonely.
Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.
Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.
No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.
With all our horrors and faults, somewhere in us there is a shining.
How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.
My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.
Time is the only critic without ambition.
Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others to talk.
Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much - make it greedy, miserable and sick.
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.
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.
As happens sometimes, a moment settled and hovered and remained for much more than a moment. And sound stopped and movement stopped for much, much more than a moment.
Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
Ah, the prayers of the millions, how they must fight and destroy each other on their way to the throne of God.
Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do...Try to be better than yourself.
Socialism is just another form of religion, and thus delusional.
I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments
A book is like a man - clever and dull, brave and cowardly, beautiful and ugly.
And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.
I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
Many a trip continues long after movement in time and space have ceased.
Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
Well, I remember this girl. I am not whole without her. I am not alive without her. When she was with me I was more alive than I have ever been, and not only when she was pleasant either. Even when we were fighting I was whole.
An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’— that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.
I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.
I've always tried out my material on my dogs first. Years ago, when my red setter chewed up the manuscript of 'Of Mice and Men,' I said at the time that the dog must have been an excellent literary critic.
To finish is sadness to a writer — a little death. He puts the last word down and it is done. But it isn't really done. The story goes on and leaves the writer behind, for no story is ever done.
There's nothing in the world like that first taste of beer.
Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper.
If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it.
That man who is more then his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis.
A man on a horse is spiritually, as well as physically, bigger then a man on foot.
Father and son are natural enemies and each is happier and more secure in keeping it that way.
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt- and there is the story of mankind.
It is the hour of pearl—the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
I have written a great many stories and I still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances.
A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.
No one wants advice - only corroboration.
We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
The nicest thing in the world you can do for anybody is let them help you.
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 almost always leads to love.
If a story is not about the hearer, he will not listen. And here I make a rule—a great and interesting story is about everyone or it will not last.
Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.
I believe that love cannot be bought except with love.
Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page a day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.
Only through imitation do we develop toward originality.
I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.
Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.
It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.
Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.
No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony.
Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans
I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.
I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.
Anything that just costs money is cheap.
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.
There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.
Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.
You're bound to get idears if you go thinkin' about stuff
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen.
A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it.
A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.
Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.
I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.
An answer is invariably the parent of a whole family of new questions.
The camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be the extension of mind and heart.
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
If we could learn even a little to like ourselves, maybe our cruelties and angers might melt away.
Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
Farewell has a sweet sound of reluctance. Good-by is short and final, a word with teeth sharp to bite through the string that ties past to the future.
Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you seem large and tragic? ...Well, think about it. Maybe you're playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.
I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.
The final weapon is the brain, all else is supplemental.
People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments.
People like you to be something, preferably what they are.
In writing, habit seems to be a much stronger force than either willpower or inspiration.
I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now--only that place where the books are kept.
People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.
There are places in this world where fable, myth, preconception, love, longing or prejudice step in and so distort a cool, clear appraisal that a kind of high colored magical confusion takes permanent hold...Surely Texas is such a place.
It's awful not to be loved. It's the worst thing in the world...It makes you mean, and violent, and cruel.
The lies we tell about our duty and our purposes, the meaningless words of science and philosophy, are walls that topple before a bewildered little ‘why’.
Trips to fairly unknown regions should be made twice; once to make mistakes and once to correct them.
It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.
All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.
My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned.
The power of an attitude is amazing
American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse.
The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.
― John Steinbeck Quotes
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
