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In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.

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
Certain
Good
Men
Topmost
Frailty
Underneath
Layers
Uncertainty
Loved

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
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I'm back with my own kind of people here now, the bums and drinkers and no goods and it is a fine thing.
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You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.
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I do want to make it very convincing. And the best way to do that is to put most of it in dialogue.
John Steinbeck
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People don't want advice...only corroboration.
John Steinbeck
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Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish.
John Steinbeck
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An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.
John Steinbeck
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Somewhere in the world there is a defeat for everyone. Some are destroyed by defeat, and some made small and mean by victory. Greatness lives in one who triumphs equally over defeat and victory.
John Steinbeck
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The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world. And he must hold to this illusion even when he knows it is not true.
John Steinbeck
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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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Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
John Steinbeck
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The direction of a big act will warp history, but probably all acts do the same in their degree, down to a stone stepped over in the path or the breath caught at sight of a pretty girl or a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.
John Steinbeck
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There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.
John Steinbeck
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He saw something that makes a man doubtful of the constancy of the realities outside himself. It was the shocking discovery that makes a man wonder if I've missed this, what else have I failed to see?
John Steinbeck
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I ought to of shot that dog myself, George. I shouldn't ought to of let no stranger shoot my dog.
John Steinbeck
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Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.
John Steinbeck
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I dislike helplessness in other people and in myself, and this is by far my greatest fear of illness.
John Steinbeck
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We spend our time searching for security and hate it when we get it.
John Steinbeck
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The dairy man had a Ph.D. in mathematics, and he must have had some training in philosophy. He liked what he was doing and he didn't want to be somewhere else - one of the few contented people I met in my whole journey.
John Steinbeck
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Such is the prestige of the Nobel Award and of this place where I stand that I am impelled, not to speak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession and in the great and good men who have practised it through the ages.
John Steinbeck