Top 80 Leon Uris Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features.”

— Leon Uris

2. “Pride is a fool’s fortress.”

— Leon Uris

3. “Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.”

— Leon Uris

4. “I was a terrible English student.”

— Leon Uris

5. “Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.”

— Leon Uris

6. “After all, the only thing that is going to save mankind is if enough people live their lives for something or someone other than themselves.”

— Leon Uris

7. “Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?”

— Leon Uris

8. “Before we pass judgment on the Germans let me say that I have never found an American who has expressed personal guilt over the fact that we destroyed a people and their civilization in brutal indifference to gain the North American continent.”

— Leon Uris

9. “Look at me, man, look at me and tell me I don’t know what I’m about. I’m Conor Larkin. I’m an Irishman and I’ve had enough.”

— Leon Uris

10. “Shoshanna, the first kibbutz in Palestine, seemed to be the long-awaited answer for Zionism.”

— Leon Uris

11. “Love can’t mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That’s the only real path to love.”

— Leon Uris

12. “Often we have no time for our friends but all the time in the world for our enemies.”

— Leon Uris

13. “To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.”

— Leon Uris

14. “You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.”

— Leon Uris

15. “Polish prisoner Dr. Wladislaw Dering performed castrations and ovariectomies ordered by his German masters as part of their insane program to find a way to sterilize the entire Jewish race.”

— Leon Uris

16. “It all begins and ends in the same place, doesn’t it? Conor and me in Ballyutogue. We all come home eventually.”

— Leon Uris

17. “There’s a curse on me as there’s a curse on the Larkin name. The curse comes back, again and again, to taunt me! Ronan! Kilty! Tomas! And now me! What are the Irish among men? Are we lepers? Are we a blight? Will there ever be an end to our tears?”

— Leon Uris

18. “Life hinges on many factors we cannot control. Two of the most important factors, we can control. We can manage our relationships-and what is life but a series of relationships?-and we can correct our mistakes, here on earth within our life span.”

— Leon Uris

19. “I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things don’t make a writer mad, he’ll end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.”

— Leon Uris

20. “I have drawn inspiration from the Marine Corps, the Jewish struggle in Palestine and Israel, and the Irish.”

— Leon Uris

21. “For you see, in Ireland there is no future, only the past happening over and over.”

— Leon Uris

22. “My greatest accomplishment is Exodus. It changed a lot of peoples lives, it changed the conception of the Jewish people in the international scene.”

— Leon Uris

23. “All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.”

— Leon Uris

24. “Bruce, these Jews escaping from Europe have posed quite a problem. They are simply flooding Palestine. Frankly, the Arabs are getting quite upset about the numbers getting into the mandate. We here have decided to set up detention camps on Cyprus to contain these people – at least as a temporary measure until Whitehall decides what we are going to do with the Palestine mandate.” “I see,” Sutherland said softly.”

— Leon Uris

25. “I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do.”

— Leon Uris

26. “I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be very ruthless.”

— Leon Uris

27. “They lingered over cups of ersatz coffee.”

— Leon Uris

28. “What could be more fortunate for the German propaganda machine than to be able to pump the theme that the Jews of Palestine were stealing the Arab lands just as they had tried to steal Germany. Jew hating and British imperialism – what music to the Mufti’s ears! The.”

— Leon Uris

29. “A soldier has one item that cannot be neglected. His feet. They are his wheels, his mechanised warfare.”

— Leon Uris

30. “The Nazis took bullies and bums and made them heroes. In exchange, the bums gave absolute obedience. There was no qualm or remorse or inner conflicts of conscience when Schreiker was asked to destroy a synagogue or murder.”

— Leon Uris

31. “It is extremely important to know what you don’t want to find.”

— Leon Uris

32. “France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews the full rights of citizenship without qualification.”

— Leon Uris

33. “To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.”

— Leon Uris

34. “English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can’t buy it no one puts it there you’re born with it.”

— Leon Uris

35. “I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.”

— Leon Uris

36. “Mirror, Standard, Telegraph, Birmingham Post, Sketch, all careful to report accurately the events without editorial comment. Unlike some countries, the British press must be exceedingly careful not to try a man in the newspapers and magazines before he comes to court. In such cases when a newspaper becomes an accuser or prejudger, turning public sentiment, the paper can be named as a defendant to the action. It keeps journalism honest.”

— Leon Uris

37. “I essentially write for myself.”

— Leon Uris

38. “Until a man is struck in his own face he does not want to believe the attack on his brother concerns him.”

— Leon Uris

39. “The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after.”

— Leon Uris

40. “Writing, basically breaks down to relationships between people and that is what you write about.”

— Leon Uris

41. “Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.”

— Leon Uris

42. “I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.”

— Leon Uris

43. “Our land has grown a magnificent liberty tree and its fruit is the richest ideal of the human soul. But, we cannot go on forever merely eating the fruit of the liberty tree or it will die. We must begin to plant some seeds.”

— Leon Uris

44. “I do not write for an audience.”

— Leon Uris

45. “I’ve not been right for any man or myself since I met you.”

— Leon Uris

46. “There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.”

— Leon Uris

47. “A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself won’t hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven’t the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.”

— Leon Uris

48. “My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953.”

— Leon Uris

49. “And one day a great thing happened. Dov Landau smiled again.”

— Leon Uris

50. “If you remember nothing else, remember this. No crime a man commits in behalf of his freedom can be as great as the crimes committed by those who deny his freedom.”

— Leon Uris