26 Quotes by Bernard DeVoto

The dawn of knowledge is usually the false dawn.

The West begins where the average annual rainfall drops below twenty inches. When you reach the line which marks that drop – for convenience, the one hundredth meridian – you have reached the West.

Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man’s lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much?

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

The water of life was given to us to make us see for a while that we are more nearly men and women, more nearly kind and gentle and generous, pleasanter and stronger than without its vision there is any evidence we are.

When evening quickens in the street, comes a pause in the day’s occupation that is known as the cocktail hour.

Something can be done with people who put pickled onions in: strangulation seems best.

You can no more keep a Martini in the refrigerator than you can keep a kiss there.

The trouble with the sacred Individual is that he has no significance, except as he can acquire it from others, from the social whole.