Top 400 Jack London Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Interesting Quotes, Live Life Quotes, Life Lessons Quotes, Intelligent Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes

2. “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Startup Quotes

3. “You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Persistence Quotes, Taking Action Quotes, Quotes About Writing, Determination Quotes, Work Hard Quotes

4. “The function of man is to live, not to exist.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Meaning Quotes

5. “I would rather be ashes than dust.”

— Jack London

6. “Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Survival Quotes

7. “I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.”

— Jack London

8. “The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

9. “The Wild still lingered in him and the wolf in him merely slept.”

— Jack London

10. “I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”

— Jack London

11. “Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.”

— Jack London

12. “Not all the monsters have fangs.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Real Quotes

13. “Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Tattoo Quotes

14. “The Stone the Builders Rejected.”

— Jack London

15. “White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Strong Quotes

16. “But I am I. And I won’t subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind.”

— Jack London

17. “My life shall be free and broad and great, and I will not be the slave to the sense delights which chained my ancient ancestry. I reject the heritage. I break the entail. And who are you to say I am unwise?”

— Jack London

18. “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”

— Jack London

19. “Life is so short. I would rather sing one song than interpret the thousand.”

— Jack London

20. “Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.”

— Jack London

21. “The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.”

— Jack London

22. “Alcohol tells truth, but its truth is not normal.”

— Jack London

23. “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.”

— Jack London

24. “I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.”

— Jack London

25. “Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.”

— Jack London

26. “Affluence means influence.”

— Jack London

27. “I would rather be ashes than dust. I would rather be a streaming meteor than a sleepy and permanent planet. I would rather burn out in a blaze of streaming glory than be stifled like dry rot. I shall use my time.”

— Jack London

28. “You look back and see how hard you worked and how poor you were, and how desperately anxious you were to succeed, and all you can remember is how happy you were.”

— Jack London

29. “The word is too weak. There is no word in the language strong enough to describe my feelings.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Strong Quotes

30. “Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.”

— Jack London

31. “And at the instant he knew, he ceased to know.”

— Jack London

32. “A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.”

— Jack London

33. “The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.”

— Jack London

34. “He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Strong Quotes

35. “To be able to forget means sanity.”

— Jack London

36. “There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.”

— Jack London

37. “A human life the treasure of the world cannot buy; nor can it redeem one which is misspent; nor can it make full and complete and beautiful a life which is dwarfed and warped and ugly.”

— Jack London

38. “As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.”

— Jack London

39. “The ghostly winter silence had given way to the great spring murmur of awakening life.”

— Jack London

40. “It’s better to stand by someone’s side than by yourself.”

— Jack London

41. “The scab is a traitor to his God, his mother, and his class.”

— Jack London

42. “My mistake was in ever opening the books.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Book Quotes

43. “Love is the sum of all the arts, as it is the reason for their existence.”

— Jack London

44. “Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Strong Quotes

45. “Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.”

— Jack London

46. “I believe that when I am dead, I am dead. I believe that with my death I am just as much obliterated as the last mosquito you and I squashed.”

— Jack London

47. “Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good. He who follows the fact cannot go astray, while he who has no reverence for the fact wanders afar.”

— Jack London

48. “He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.”

— Jack London

49. “Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the first time.”

— Jack London

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

50. “Food and fire, protection and companionship, were some of the things he received from the god. In return, he guarded the god’s property, defended his body, worked for him, and obeyed him.”

— Jack London