Top 400 Jack London Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “The fortunate man is the one who cannot take more than a couple of drinks without becoming intoxicated. The unfortunate wight is the one who can take many glasses without betraying a sign; who must take numerous glasses in order to get the ‘kick’.”

— Jack London

302. “Such words he spoke, but they are not his words. He was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths fell continually from his lips.”

— Jack London

303. “Also, as I looked at the mite of a youth with the heart of a lion, I thought, this is the type that on occasion rears barricades and shows the world that men have not forgotten how to die.”

— Jack London

304. “Already the zest of combat, which of old had been so keen and lasting, had died down, and he discovered that he was self-analytical, too much so to live, single heart and single hand, so primitive an existence.”

— Jack London

305. “Sometimes he pursued the call into the forest, looking for it as though it were a tangible thing, barking softly or defiantly... Irresistible impulses seized him. he would be lying in camp, dozing lazily in the heat of the day, when suddenly his head would lift and his ears cock up, intent and listening, and he would spring on his feet and dash away, and on and on, for hours, though the forest aisles.”

— Jack London

306. “As imagination grew it is likely that the fear of death increased until the Folk that were to come projected this fear into the dark and peopled it with spirits.”

— Jack London

307. “She had liked him for himself, that was indisputable. And yet, much as she had liked him she had liked the bourgeois standard of valuation more.”

— Jack London

308. “A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits.”

— Jack London

309. “He was disappointed in it all. He had developed into an alien. As the steam beer had tasted raw, so their companionship seemed raw to him. He was too far removed. Too many thousands of opened books yawned between them and him. He had exiled himself. He had travelled in the vast realm of intellect until he could no longer return home. On the other hand, he was human, and his gregarious need for companionship remained unsatisfied. He had found no new home.”

— Jack London

310. “He had opened up for me the world of the real, of which I had known practically nothing and from which I had always shrunk. I had learned to look more closely at life as it was lived, to recognize that there were such things as facts in the world, to emerge from the realm of mind and idea and to place certain values on the concrete and objective phases of existence.”

— Jack London

311. “When I think of the play of force and matter, and all the tremendous struggle of it, I feel as if I could write an epic on the grass.”

— Jack London

312. “It must always remain the great curiosity of history – a whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing unexpected and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those rash political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of social processes. Capitalism.”

— Jack London

313. “And yet the quality of the life is good. All human potentialities are in it. Given proper conditions, it could live through the centuries, and great men, heroes and masters, spring from it and make the world better by having lived.”

— Jack London

314. “He had discovered, in the course of his reading, two schools of fiction. One treated of man as a god, ignoring his earthly origin; the other treated of man as a clod, ignoring his heavensent dreams and divine possibilities.”

— Jack London

315. “He felt the stress and strain of life, its fevers and sweats and wild insurgences – surely this was the stuff to write about! He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor. And.”

— Jack London

316. “Such verdicts are crimes against truth. The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.”

— Jack London

317. “This is the first time I have heard ‘ethics’ in the mouth of a man. You and I are the only men on this ship that know its meaning. At one time in my life, I dreamed that I might someday talk with men who used such language, that I might lift myself out of the place in life in which I had been born, and hold conversation and mingle with men who talked about just such things as ethics.”

— Jack London

318. “You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics; and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other metaphysician wrong – to his own satisfaction.”

— Jack London

319. “Then arises the third and inexorable question: If Civilisation has increased the producing power of the average man, why has it not bettered the lot of the average man? There can be one answer only – MISMANAGEMENT.”

— Jack London

320. “But behold! As soon as I went out on the adventure-path I met John Barleycorn again.”

— Jack London

321. “In the height of the gusts, in my high position, where the seas did not break, I found myself compelled to cling tightly to the rail to escape being blown away. My face was stung to severe pain by the high-driving spindrift, and I had a feeling that the wind was blowing the cobwebs out of my sleep-starved brain.”

— Jack London

322. “The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great historical events have their place in social evolution. They were inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the movements of stars. Without.”

— Jack London

323. “We must accept the capitalistic stage in social evolution as about on a par with the earlier monkey stage. The human had to pass through those stages in its rise from the mire and slime of low organic life. It was inevitable that much of the mire and slime should cling and be not easily shaken off.”

— Jack London

324. “Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”

— Jack London

325. “Buck found it to be cheaper to mend his ways than to retaliate.”

— Jack London

326. “The myriads that raise the cry of hunger wail in the greatest empire in the world.”

— Jack London

327. “Thus he learned hurt; and on top of it he learned to avoid hurt, first, by not incurring the risk of it...”

— Jack London

328. “The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe.”

— Jack London

329. “It was bewildering. He was sprawling through solidity. And ever the light grew brighter. Fear urged him to go back, but growth drove him on.”

— Jack London

330. “To man, alone among the animals, has been given the awful privilege of reason. Man, with his brain, can penetrate the intoxicating show of things and look upon the universe brazen with indifference toward him and his dreams.”

— Jack London

331. “His world was gloomy; but he did not know that, for he knew no other world.”

— Jack London

332. “I could neither laugh with nor at the solemn utterances of men I esteemed ponderous asses; nor could I laugh, nor engage in my old-time lightsome persiflage, with the silly superficial chatterings of women, who, underneath all their silliness and softness, were as primitive, direct, and deadly in their pursuit of biological destiny as the monkeys women were before they shed their furry coats and replaced them with the furs of other animals.”

— Jack London

333. “Times have changed since Christ’s day. A rich man to-day who gives all he has to the poor is crazy. There is no discussion. Society has spoken.”

— Jack London

334. “The metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience.”

— Jack London

335. “He had sought to equip himself with the tools of artistry. On the other hand, he had not sacrificed strength. His conscious aim had been to increase his strength by avoiding excess of strength. Nor.”

— Jack London

336. “And, when the whim changes, it is most easy and delightfully disconcerting to play with the respectable and cowardly bourgeois fetishes and to laugh and epigram at the flitting god-ghosts and the debaucheries and follies of wisdom.”

— Jack London

337. “He alone rated himself beyond diamonds and rubies.”

— Jack London

338. “The thing I like most of all is personal achievement – not achievement for the world’s applause, but achievement for my own delight.”

— Jack London

339. “I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,” Ernest went on. “Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness.”

— Jack London

340. “And, dying, he declined to die.”

— Jack London

341. “Several weeks went by, during which Martin Eden studied his grammar, reviewed the books on etiquette, and read voraciously the books that caught his fancy.”

— Jack London

342. “I still read the books to-day, but never again shall I read them with that old glory of youthful passion when I harked to the call from over and beyond that whispered me on to win to the mystery at the back of life and behind the stars.”

— Jack London

343. “He studied the nail-formation, and prodded the finger-tips, now sharply, and again softly, gauging the nerve-sensations produced. It fascinated him, and he grew suddenly fond of this subtle flesh of his that worked so beautifully and smoothly and delicately. Then he would cast a glance of fear at the wolf-circle drawn expectantly about him, and like a blow the realization would strike him that this wonderful body of his, this living flesh, was no more than so much meat...”

— Jack London

344. “The master rode alone that day; and in the woods, side by side, White Fang ran with Collie, as his mother, Kiche, and old One Eye had run long years before in the silent Northland forest.”

— Jack London

345. “It was illumination, a great light in the darkness of his ignorance, and he read poetry more avidly than ever.”

— Jack London

346. “It seemed so tawdry what he had offered her – mere money – compared with what she offered him. He offered her an extraneous thing with which he could part without a pang, while she offered him herself, along with disgrace and shame, and sin, and all her hopes of heaven.”

— Jack London

347. “He sniffed the sweetness of the tawny grass, which entered his brain and set his thoughts whirling on from the particular to the universal.”

— Jack London

348. “Then the business game is to make profits out of others, and to prevent others from making profits out of you.”

— Jack London

349. “It was love that had worked the revolution in him, changing him from an uncouth sailor to a student and an artist; therefore, to him, the finest and greatest of the three, greater than learning and artistry, was love.”

— Jack London

350. “Hers was that common insularity of mind that makes human creatures believe that their color, creed, and politics are best and right and that other human creatures scattered over the world are less fortunately placed than they.”

— Jack London