121 Quotes by Dalton Trumbo

He could almost hear the wail of pain that went up from his heart. It was a sharp terrible personal pain the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm turns on you and says goodbye goodbye forever without any reason for doing it. Without any reason at all.

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children that will never be born (the last we can afford: there are too many starving children in the world already).

How could you believe or disbelieve anything anymore? Four maybe five million men killed and none of them wanting to die while hundreds maybe thousands were left crazy or blind or crippled and couldn’t die no matter how hard they tried.

Well, life isn't always what one likes.

The only kind of love worth having is the kind that goes on living and laughing and fighting and loving.

We'll free every slave in every town and region. Can anybody get a bigger army than that?

Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.

A good businessman never makes a contract unless he's sure he can carry it through, yet every fool on earth is perfectly willing to sign a marriage contract without considering whether he can live up to it or not.

Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular gift in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.