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I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.
John Steinbeck
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John Steinbeck
Age: 66 †
Born: 1902
Born: February 27
Died: 1968
Died: December 20
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Salinas
California
John Ernst Steinbeck
Jr.
John Ernst Steinbeck
John Ernest Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr
Steinbeck
Men
Membership
Passionately
Dedication
Writer
Hold
Literature
Perfectibility
Doe
Gallantry
Believe
Hygiene
More quotes by John Steinbeck
The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage.
John Steinbeck
It occurs to me that just as the Carthaginians hired mercenaries to do their fighting for them, we Americans being in mercenaries to do our hard and humble work. I hope we may not be overwhelmed one day by peoples not too proud or too lazy or too soft to bend to the earth and pick up the things we eat.
John Steinbeck
So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out.
John Steinbeck
Man himself has become our greatest hazard and our only hope. So that today, St. John the apostle may well be paraphrased: In the end is the Word, and the Word is Man - and the Word is with Men.
John Steinbeck
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past?
John Steinbeck
I see too many men delay their exits with a sickly, slow reluctance to leave the stage. It's bad theater as well as bad living.
John Steinbeck
Perhaps the less we have, the more we are required to brag.
John Steinbeck
If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor in hisself, there ain't no million acres gonna make him feel rich, an' maybe he's disappointed that nothin' he can do 'll make him feel rich.
John Steinbeck
It is strange how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place. Everyone must have one, although I never heard a man tell of it.
John Steinbeck
War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.
John Steinbeck
You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.
John Steinbeck
There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.
John Steinbeck
I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody.
John Steinbeck
For there are two possible reactions to social ostracism - either a man emerges determined to be better, purer, and kindlier or he goes bad, challenges the world and does even worse things. The last is by far the commonest reaction to stigma.
John Steinbeck
Some men hunger so much for love that they lose everything that is loveable about them.
John Steinbeck
Writing to me is a deeply personal, even a secret function and when the product I turned loose it is cut off from me and I have no sense of its being mine. Consequently criticism doesn't mean anything to me. As a disciplinary matter, it is too late.
John Steinbeck
It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
John Steinbeck
When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.
John Steinbeck
Out of all this struggle a good thing is going to grow. That makes it worthwhile.
John Steinbeck
The bank - the monster has to have profits all the time. It can't wait. It'll die. No, taxes go on. When the monster stops growing, it dies. It can't stay one size.
John Steinbeck
