Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Always
Leader
Herd
Men
Started
Herds
Winning
Battles
Start
Followers
Fighting
Wars
Free
Defeat
War
Battle
Cannot
Fight
More quotes by John Steinbeck
She wasn't happy, but then she wasn't unhappy. She wasn't anything. But I don't believe anyone is a nothing. There has to be something inside, if only to keep the skin from collapsing. This vacant eye, listless hand, this damask cheek dusted like a doughnut with plastic powder, had to have a memory or a dream.
John Steinbeck
It's almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.
John Steinbeck
How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise - the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream - be set down alive?
John Steinbeck
The people say that the two seemed to be removed from human experience that they had gone through pain and had come out on the other side.
John Steinbeck
There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.
John Steinbeck
Lord, how the day passes! It's like a life - so quickly when we don't watch it and so slowly when we do.
John Steinbeck
Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.
John Steinbeck
Thou mayest rule over sin.
John Steinbeck
Only let a man say that he will do something and a whole mechanism goes to work to stop him.
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
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
John Steinbeck
Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there's time, the Bastard Time.
John Steinbeck
And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.
John Steinbeck
Maybe-- maybe love makes you suspicious and doubting. Is it true that when you love a woman you are never sure-- never sure of her because you aren't sure of yourself?
John Steinbeck
But a man needs company.
John Steinbeck
As with many people, Charles, who could not talk, wrote with fullness. He set down his loneliness and his perplexities, and he put on paper many things he did not know about himself.
John Steinbeck
Liza poured thick batter from a pitcher onto a soapstone griddle. The hot cakes rose like little hassocks, and small volcanoes formed and erupted on them until they were ready to be turned. A cheerful brown, they were, with tracings of darker brown. And the kitchen was full of the good sweet smell of them.
John Steinbeck
For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have.
John Steinbeck
A journey is a person in itself no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck
Just as our bread, mixed and baked, packaged and sold without benefit of accident or human frailty, is uniformly good and uniformly tasteless, so will our speech become one speech.
John Steinbeck
