John Steinbeck Quotes are a reflection of his deep understanding of the human condition, and his ability to articulate the complexities of life, society, and relationships. Many of his quotes come from his famous works.
We have tried to take some of the most memorable and famous John Steinbeck Quotes out there and compiled a large list for you to have an interesting read.
Who Is John Steinbeck?
John Steinbeck Quotes are part of his literary work that depicts his perspective to us in a way for us to understand better and learn from his perspective. John Steinbeck was born on February 27, 1902, in California.
He was an American short story writer and novelist. Most of his words are celebrated for their portrayals of the human condition during the Great Depression era. Often forcing on the struggles of farmers and laborers, he disguised his writing through deep empathy for eh common man.
His masterpieces, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and East of Eden have deep themes of fate, injustice, and resilience, which earned him the Novel Prize in Literature in 1962.
His writing is very realistic and imaginative and combines sympathetic humor and keen social perception. It is a testament to his talent for capturing the spirit of America’s landscapes and the hearts of its people making John Steinbeck a literal giant in American letters.
58 John Steinbeck Quotes You Must Read
58 of the most memorable John Steinbeck Quotes are listed right here:
“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
“Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
“Try to understand men. If you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and almost always leads to love.”
“A man without words is a man without thought.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.”
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”
“In every bit of honest writing in the world, there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other.”
“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.”
“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.”
“Time is the only critic without ambition.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.”
“There is more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty.”
“It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”
“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people.”
“We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.”
“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
“Only mediocrity escapes criticism.”
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
“If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
“Books are the best friends you can have; they inform you, and entertain you, and they don’t talk back.”
“To be alive at all is to have scars.”
“I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“If you understand each other you will be kind to each other.”
“There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable.”
“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“My imagination will get me a passport to hell one day.”
“Anything that just costs money is cheap.”
“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people.”
“We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.”
“The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
“Only mediocrity escapes criticism.”
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“If you want to destroy a nation, give it too much – make it greedy, miserable and sick.”
“It has always seemed strange to me… the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”
“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”
“All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” — John Steinbeck
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”
“And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed.”
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“When a child first catches adults out – when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just – his world falls into panic desolation.”
“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.”
“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“All great and precious things are lonely.”
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is indestructible.”
“There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”
“It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“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.”
“Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died.”
“It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.”
“Muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved.”
“For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
John Steinbeck Quotes
Afterwords For John Steinbeck Quotes
For those interested in exploring John Steinbeck Quotes, this article is a prime read. We have provided 58 of the most comprehensive collections of John Steinbeck Quotes that represent his thoughts, and his literature.
If you are interested in more of John Steinbeck’s works not just John Steinbeck Quotes then be sure to check our collection of John Steinbeck’s works and more Books right now!
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