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I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

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
Looks
Much
Like
Destruction
Progress
Wonder

More quotes by John Steinbeck

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A strange species we are, We can stand anything God and nature can throw at us save only plenty. If I wanted to destroy a nation, I would give it too much, and I would have it on its knees, miserable, greedy, sick. --John Steinbeck to Adlai Stevenson
John Steinbeck
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A dying people tolerates the present, rejects the future, and finds its satisfactions in past greatness and half remembered glory
John Steinbeck
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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.
John Steinbeck
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A funeral isn't for the dead. You'll simply be a stage set for a kind of festival maybe. And besides, you won't even be there.
John Steinbeck
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Strange how one person can saturate a room with vitality, with excitement. Then there are others, and this dame was one of them, who can drain off energy and joy, can suck pleasure dry and get no sustenance from it. Such people spread a grayness in the air about them.
John Steinbeck
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Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody - to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.
John Steinbeck
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A plan is a real thing, and things projected are experienced. A plan once made and visualized becomes reality along with other realities—never to be destroyed but easily to be attacked.
John Steinbeck
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Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.
John Steinbeck
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Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.
John Steinbeck
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Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.
John Steinbeck
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Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck
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All we got is the family unbroke.
John Steinbeck
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In Spanish there is a word for which I can't find a counterword in English. It is the verb VACILAR... It does not mean vacillating at all. If one is vacilando, he is going somewhere, but does not greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction.
John Steinbeck
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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
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Strength and success - they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is for failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.
John Steinbeck
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Well, every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing.
John Steinbeck
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Four hoarse blasts of a ship's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.
John Steinbeck
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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.
John Steinbeck
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Niagara Falls is very nice. I'm very glad I saw it, because from now on if I am asked whether I have seen Niagara Falls I can say yes, and be telling the truth for once.
John Steinbeck
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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.
John Steinbeck