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Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.
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
Start
Followers
Fighting
Wars
Free
Defeat
War
Battle
Cannot
Fight
Always
Leader
Herd
Men
Started
Herds
Winning
Battles
More quotes by John Steinbeck
Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
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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.
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You can boast about anything if it's all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
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A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.
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There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.
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Books are the best friends you can have they inform you, and entertain you, and they don't talk back.
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But you must give him some sign, some sign that you love him... or he'll never be a man. All his life he'll feel guilty and alone unless you release him.
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Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.
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There's something desirable about anything you're used to as opposed to something you're not.
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I can still tend the rabbits, George? I didn't mean no harm, George.
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The curious hocus-pocus of criticism I can't take seriously. It consists in squirreling up some odd phrases and then waiting for a book to come running by.
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All great and precious things are lonely.
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Kino heard the little splash of morning waves on the beach. It was very good -- Kino closed his eyes again to listen to his music.
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I suffer as always from the fear of putting down the first line. It is amazing the terrors, the magics, the prayers, the straitening shyness that assail one. It is as though the words were not only indelible but that they spread out like dye in water and color everything around them. A strange and mystic business, writing.
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I wonder why it is that when I plan a route too carefully, it goes to pieces, whereas if I blunder along in blissful ignorance aimed in a fancied direction I get through with no trouble.
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Intentions, good or bad, are not enough. There's luck or fate or something else that takes over.
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I've lived in good climate, and it bores the hell out of me. I like weather rather than climate.
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Don't make everyone know about your sadness.
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Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.
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Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
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