1,374 Quotes by John Steinbeck

Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad or a stimulant

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'.

Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals.

You see, I have been at revaluing myself in the last few days. I may have some value to historians because I have destroyed a few things. The builder of your Cathedral is forgotten even now, but I, who burned it, may be remembered for a hundred years or so. And that may mean something or other about mankind.

I do love her, and that’s odd because she is everything I detest in anyone else.

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

The flies have conquered the flypaper.

It [the Mexican War] was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

A reputation for money is almost as negotiable as money itself.