Top 80 Leon Uris Quotes (2024 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “Perhaps the bazaar looks disorganized to you, but it works for us. Perhaps Islam looks fanatical to you, but it provides us with the means to survive the harshness of this life and prepare us for a better life hereafter.”

— Leon Uris

52. “Truth is what people want to believe and nothing more.”

— Leon Uris

53. “You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.”

— Leon Uris

54. “In order to be a good writer, you’ve got to be a bad boss. Self-discipline and stamina are the two major arms in a writer’s arsenal.”

— Leon Uris

55. “I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer.”

— Leon Uris

56. “The only time we can attract a crowd is for some pilgrimage up some god-damned holy mountain to chase the snakes and banshees out of the country.”

— Leon Uris

57. “The true guilty draw a curtain on the past. The most innocent assume the guilt. Unfortunately there are too few Germans like that girl.”

— Leon Uris

58. “Usually a good part of the people trying it end up not making it.”

— Leon Uris

59. “In God’s scheme what is a few billion years here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of these civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last because people treat each other the way they ought to.”

— Leon Uris

60. “The soldier from the West is fairly predictable. One can surmise what a German or a French or Italian group of men will do under certain circumstances. However, the Russian soldier is an Asian, an oriental of sorts and he is completely unpredictable by Western standards. He will fight like a wild man on a given day. On another day, under the same circumstances, he will break and run.”

— Leon Uris

61. “Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he’s either naive or insane.”

— Leon Uris

62. “Johann Clement watched the blows fall. First there had been wild talk and then printed accusations and insinuations. Then came a boycott of Jewish business and professional people, then the public humiliations: beatings and beard pullings. Then came the night terror of the Brown Shirts. Then came the concentration camps. Gestapo, SS, SD, KRIPO, RSHA. Soon every family in Germany was under Nazi scrutiny, and the grip of tyranny tightened until the last croak of defiance strangled and died.”

— Leon Uris

63. “The Yishuv covered itself with glory. Just as in World War I the British glorified the Arab revolt – so they tried to hide the efforts of the Yishuv in World War II. No country gave with so much vitality to the war. But the British Government did not want the Jews to use this as a bargaining point for their homeland aspirations later on. Whitehall and Chatham House kept the Yishuv’s war effort one of the best secrets of the war.”

— Leon Uris

64. “A combination of many stupidities can end up being a worthy man if he learns from his stupidities.”

— Leon Uris

65. “Jossi had been slow in agreeing with Ben Yehuda and the others. Hebrew had to be revived. If the desire for national identity was great enough a dead language could be brought back. But Sarah was set in her ways. Yiddish was what she spoke and what her mother had spoken. She had no intention of becoming a scholar so late in life.”

— Leon Uris

66. “France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews the full rights of citizenship without qualification. Their position was further enhanced by Napoleon, according to whom Judaism was a religion, not a nationality. So long as French Jews regarded it only as a religion and gave their loyalty to France, they ought to be granted full.”

— Leon Uris

67. “Almost everything that Jesus taught, all His ideas, had been set down before in the Old Testament. Then came the largest riddle of all. If Jesus were to return to the earth she was certain He would go to a synagogue rather than a church. Why could people worship Jesus and hate His people?”

— Leon Uris

68. “One of the first things Hansen learned when he came to starving Russia in 1920 was that the Russians were Asians. Western culture had been imported into only a few of the larger cities. Most of Russia and the other captive states that comprised the Soviet Union simply did not think or act like the West.”

— Leon Uris

69. “She could start a fight in an empty house.”

— Leon Uris

70. “Their pledge, in fact, came close to later communal farming ideas. The communal farm was not born of social or political idealism. It was based on the necessities of survival; there was no other way.”

— Leon Uris

71. “Los hombres somos la suma total de nuestro pasado.”

— Leon Uris

72. “I never got over the horror of watching their graduation ceremonies, performed before their parents. After a demonstration of ‘military prowess’ and personal courage the ceremony ended with their biting off the heads of snakes. As the blood dripped down their chins, they roasted the dead animals for a victory feast. Other schools had the children strangle puppies and drink their blood.”

— Leon Uris

73. “Belfast was born as the mongoloid child of British imperialism.”

— Leon Uris

74. “In the end, what would Michele’s life be? A.”

— Leon Uris

75. “A lot was spoken but nothing was said.”

— Leon Uris

76. “Know from where you come. Before you know who you are and where you are going, you must know from where you come.”

— Leon Uris

77. “Children are instinctive about knowing who their friends are. – Dr. Lieberman.”

— Leon Uris

78. “There is no present or future – only the past, happening over and over again – now.” – EUGENE O’NEILL.”

— Leon Uris

79. “Likewise, Nothing is generally what prospectors find. Nothing is in the head of politicians. “We must try to understand oft-misunderstood philosophers who actually do Nothing, think Nothing, and say Nothing, because he who does Nothing can do Nothing wrong. He who thinks of Nothing day and night plants no evil and Nothing offends no one.” “I want you to defend me if I need a lawyer,” Conor said. “On what charges?” Theo asked. “Nothing,” Conor said. “I’ll have you out in no time flat.”

— Leon Uris

80. “He did not believe, in his wildest moments, that he would ever see Palestine, nor did he believe his children would ever see Palestine. But he did believe in the idea.”

— Leon Uris

81. “But once you allow yourself to think that there are some people, because of their race, their color, or religion, who are really not human beings you have established a justification for imposing every sort of humiliation on them.”

— Leon Uris

82. “Unfortunately, reprisal seemed to be the only language that the Arabs understood, the only thing that might stop them.”

— Leon Uris

83. “Caroline are definitely the people to carry it out.” Men of ambition understood men of ambition.”

— Leon Uris