1. I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are so few great artists. ~ John Steinbeck
2. I wonder how many people I have looked at all my life and never seen. ~ John Steinbeck
3. The free exploring mind of the individual human being is the most valuable thing in the world. ~ John Steinbeck
4. I believe that a strong woman can be stronger than a man, particularly if she has love in her heart. ~ John Steinbeck
5. Of all the animals in creation, man is the only one who drinks without being thirsty, eats without being hungry and talks without having anything to say. ~ John Steinbeck
6. The art of rest is a part of the art of working. ~ John Steinbeck
7. Nobody wants advice, only corroborations. ~ John Steinbeck
8. I wonder why progress is seen more than destruction. ~ John Steinbeck
9. A question is a trap, and an answer sets foot in it. ~ John Steinbeck
10. By the thickness of the dust on the books of a public library, the culture of a people can be measured. ~ John Steinbeck
11. Maybe everyone is afraid of everyone else in this damn world. ~ John Steinbeck
12. Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn to care for them, and pretty soon you’ll have a dozen. ~ John Steinbeck
13. I was born lost and I don’t like to be found. ~ John Steinbeck
14. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that for a monster the norm is monstrous. ~ John Steinbeck
15. In human affairs where there is danger and care must be taken, a happy ending can be seriously jeopardized by haste. ~ John Steinbeck
16. Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the one who helps others speak. ~ John Steinbeck
17. There is more beauty in the truth, even if it is a terrible truth. ~ John Steinbeck
18. It doesn’t take a brain to be good. And sometimes I think it’s the opposite. ~ John Steinbeck
19. It is much darker when a light goes out than it might have been if the light had never shone. ~ John Steinbeck
20. What use would the heat of summer be without the cold of winter to give it sweetness? ~ John Steinbeck
21. You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself. ~ John Steinbeck
22. A city is a lot like an animal. It has a nervous system, a head, shoulders, and feet. It is separated from the other cities, in such a way that no two are identical. And it is also an emotional whole. ~ John Steinbeck
23. The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. ~ John Steinbeck
24. With a few exceptions, what men want is not money, but luxury, love and being admired. ~ John Steinbeck
25. We only have one story. ~ John Steinbeck
26. The intention, good or bad, is not enough. ~ John Steinbeck
27. Those who win the battles are the sheep, but those who win the wars are the free men. ~ John Steinbeck
28. You are no longer a man; you are a soldier. Your worries don’t matter, Lieutenant, and your life doesn’t matter, either. ~ John Steinbeck
29. Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of losing power. ~ John Steinbeck
30. How can we live without our lives? How will we know about ourselves without our past? ~ John Steinbeck
31. Change comes like a small breeze that shakes the curtains at dawn, it comes like the discreet perfume of wild flowers, hidden in the grass. ~ John Steinbeck
32. All great and precious things are lonely. ~ John Steinbeck
33. My imagination will give me a passport to hell one day. ~ John Steinbeck
34. People like you to be something, preferably who they are. ~ John Steinbeck
35. In front of us there are a thousand different lives that we could live, but when it arrives, it will only be one. ~ John Steinbeck
36. All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal. ~ John Steinbeck
37. If you are in trouble, hurt or in need, go to the poor. They are the only ones who will help, the only ones. ~ John Steinbeck
38. Greatness lives in those who triumph over defeat and victory. ~ John Steinbeck
39. I will take revenge in the cruelest way you can imagine. I’ll forget it. ~ John Steinbeck
40. And the strident little fact that echoes throughout history: repression only serves to strengthen and knit together the repressed. ~ John Steinbeck
41. I guess there are never enough books. ~ John Steinbeck
42. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. ~ John Steinbeck
43. Don’t worry about losing. If it’s correct, it happens. The main thing is not to rush. Nothing good escapes. ~ John Steinbeck
44. Men don’t get knocked out, or I mean they can hold their own against important things. What kills them is erosion; they are set to fail. They slowly get scared. ~ John Steinbeck
45. It is in the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him. ~ John Steinbeck
46. Socialism is just another form of religion and therefore delusional. ~ John Steinbeck
47. It is a common experience that a difficult problem at night is solved in the morning after the sleep committee has worked on it. ~ John Steinbeck
48. To be alive is to have scars. ~ John Steinbeck
49. It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and demons since we invented them. ~ John Steinbeck
50. If you understand each other, you will be kind to each other. ~ John Steinbeck
51. And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. ~ John Steinbeck
52. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling up and gaining weight for the vintage. ~ John Steinbeck
53. Writers are a little below clowns and a little above trained seals. ~ John Steinbeck
54. I will fight against any idea, religion or government that limits or destroys the individual. ~ John Steinbeck
55. There is no better springboard than a bad conscience to jump into philanthropy. ~ John Steinbeck
56. You can know this: fear the moment when man stops suffering and dying for a concept, because this quality is man himself, and what differentiates him in the universe as a whole. ~ John Steinbeck
57. Fear infiltrated the houses where they were staying and made them sad, and it hung over the patrols and made them cruel. ~ John Steinbeck
58. You see it a lot in war: a coward who becomes a hero and a brave man who crashes in flames. ~ John Steinbeck
59. All novels, all poetry, are built on the endless struggle between good and evil that takes place within us. ~ John Steinbeck
60. Money is very easy to make if you don’t want anything else. ~ John Steinbeck
61. That is why I will fight in favor of freedom of thought, so that you can follow the direction you want, without impositions or ties. ~ John Steinbeck
62. People do not take trips, it is the trips that make people. ~ John Steinbeck
63. Teaching can be the greatest of arts, since the medium is the human mind and spirit. ~ John Steinbeck
64. One can find so many pains when the rain is falling. ~ John Steinbeck
65. A very smart guy is hardly ever a good man. ~ John Steinbeck
66. When a man says that he doesn’t want to talk about something, it usually means that he can’t think of anything else. ~ John Steinbeck
67. Human beings sometimes have more venom than snakes. ~ John Steinbeck
68. Very often men stumble and fall because of excessive precipitation. ~ John Steinbeck
69. It doesn’t take courage to do a thing when it’s the only thing you can do. ~ John Steinbeck
70. And of course, people are only interested in themselves. If a story isn’t about the listener, he won’t listen. ~ John Steinbeck
71. There is no sin and there is no virtue. There is only what people do. ~ John Steinbeck
72. Under his shell of cowardice, man aspires to goodness and wants to be loved. If he takes the path of vice, it is because he thought he was taking a shortcut that would lead him to love. ~ John Steinbeck
73. It is curious how distant a misfortune is when it does not concern us personally. ~ John Steinbeck
74. In absolute solitude a writer tries to explain the inexplicable. ~ John Steinbeck
75. A sad soul can kill faster than a germ. ~ John Steinbeck
76. Time is the only critic, no ambition. ~ John Steinbeck
77. A trip is like marriage. One is mistaken if he thinks that he has everything under control. ~ John Steinbeck
78. A truth that is not believed hurts us much more than a lie. ~ John Steinbeck
79. I guess a loving woman is indestructible. ~ John Steinbeck
80. When two people meet, each is changed by the other, so you have two new people. ~ John Steinbeck
