Top 500 John Steinbeck Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.”

— John Steinbeck

152. “Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.”

— John Steinbeck

153. “This I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”

— John Steinbeck

154. “In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”

— John Steinbeck

155. “Once Charley fell in love with a dachshund, a romance racially unsuitable, physically ridiculous, and mechanically impossible. But all these problems Charley ignored. He loved deeply and tried dogfully.”

— John Steinbeck

156. “And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”

— John Steinbeck

157. “Money is not nice. Money got no friends but more money.”

— John Steinbeck

158. “Learning to read is probably the most difficult and revolutionary thing that happens to the human brain and if you don’t believe that, watch an illiterate adult try to do it.”

— John Steinbeck

159. “I have lost all sense of home, having moved about so much. It means to me now – only that place where the books are kept.”

— John Steinbeck

160. “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.”

— John Steinbeck

161. “The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

— John Steinbeck

162. “I nearly always write just as I nearly always breathe. – John Steinbeck.”

— John Steinbeck

163. “I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless.”

— John Steinbeck

164. “His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: “Timshel!” His eyes closed and he slept.”

— John Steinbeck

165. “Intention, good or bad, is not enough.”

— John Steinbeck

166. “A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.”

— John Steinbeck

167. “I find out of long experience that I admire all nations and hate all governments.”

— John Steinbeck

168. “You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.”

— John Steinbeck

169. “Thou mayest rule over sin.”

— John Steinbeck

170. “The candle aimed its spark of light at heaven, like an artist who consumes himself to become divine.”

— John Steinbeck

171. “You know most people live ninety per cent in the past, seven per cent in the present, and that only leaves them three per cent for the future.”

— John Steinbeck

172. “In nature two things do not occur-the wheel and good taste.”

— John Steinbeck

173. “Some men are friends with the whole world in their hearts, and there are others that hate themselves and spread their hatred around like butter on hot bread.”

— John Steinbeck

174. “Nobody changes. Nobody gets hurt.”

— John Steinbeck

175. “All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up. It isn’t that the evil thing wins – it never will – but that it doesn’t die.”

— John Steinbeck

176. “Three hours of writing require twenty hours of preparation. Luckily I have learned to dream about the work, which saves me some working time.”

— John Steinbeck

177. “So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.”

— John Steinbeck

178. “To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth.”

— John Steinbeck

179. “When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people.”

— John Steinbeck

180. “Once you have lived in New York and made it your home, no place else is good enough.”

— John Steinbeck

181. “His ear heard more than what was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”

— John Steinbeck

182. “I am impelled, not to squeak like a grateful and apologetic mouse, but to roar like a lion out of pride in my profession.”

— John Steinbeck

183. “One who was born by the ocean or has associated with it cannot ever be quite content away from it for very long.”

— John Steinbeck

184. “A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool.”

— John Steinbeck

185. “Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness.”

— John Steinbeck

186. “People are felt rather than seen after the first few moments...”

— John Steinbeck

187. “For every man in the world functions to the best of his ability, and no one does less than his best, no matter what he may think about it.”

— John Steinbeck

188. “I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags, I don’t want him satisfied.”

— John Steinbeck

189. “It is not good to want a thing too much. It sometimes drives the luck away. You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with Gods or the gods.”

— John Steinbeck

190. “He said, “I am a man,” and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god.”

— John Steinbeck

191. “I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”

— John Steinbeck

192. “The great companies did not know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line.”

— John Steinbeck

193. “He ain’t no cuckoo,” said George. “He’s dumb as hell, but he ain’t crazy. An’ I ain’t so bright neither, or I wouldn’t be buckin’ barley for my fifty and found.”

— John Steinbeck

194. “You never oughta drink water when it ain’t runnin’.”

— John Steinbeck

195. “If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank – or the Company – needs – wants – insists – must have – as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time.”

— John Steinbeck

196. “Cats drip over the fences and slither like syrup over the ground to look for fish heads. Silent.”

— John Steinbeck

197. “I guess this is why I hate governments, all governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by fine-print men. There’s nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.”

— John Steinbeck

198. “Perhaps it takes courage to raise children...”

— John Steinbeck

199. “I know now why confusion in government is not only tolerated but encouraged. I have learned. A confused people can make no clear demands.”

— John Steinbeck

200. “Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops, little manufacturers who must sell before they can make.”

— John Steinbeck