187 quotes
We can shoot rockets into space but we can’t cure anger or discontent.
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
I don't anticipate trouble and so I anticipate trouble.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God.
Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world — of all living things.
Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)
His guard was up now and he wasn't listening; he was only angry because here was a world he could not enter and so he had to disbelieve in its existence. He fell back on the world he knew.
Burning Bright (1950)
The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success.
Cannery Row (1945)
Time is more complex near the sea than in any other place, for in addition to the circling of the sun and the turning of the seasons, the waves beat out the passage of time on the rocks and the tides rise and fall as a great clepsydra.
Tortilla Flat (1935)
It is a nice thing to be working and believing in my work again. I hope I can keep the drive. I only feel whole and well when it is this way.
Yesterday in Muir Woods that dog lifted his leg on a tree that was 20 feet across, 80 feet high and a 1,000 years old — what's left in life for that poor dog?
It is a matter of disillusion to young male Americans otherwise informed, to discover that the French are a moral people — judged, that is, by American country-club standards.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.
The Moon Is Down (1942)
Syntax, my lad. It has been restored to the highest place in the republic.
The one thing our species is helpless against is good fortune. It first puzzles, then frightens, then angers, and finally destroys us.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
Even if teen-age children aren't making a sound, it's quieter when they're gone. They put a boiling in the air around them. As they left, the whole house seemed to sigh and settle. No wonder poltergeists infest only houses with adolescent children.
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that the soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil. Who is there more impious than a backsliding priest? Who more carnal than a recent virgin? This, however, may be a matter of appearance.
Tortilla Flat (1935)
I guess I’m trying to say, Grab anything that goes by. It may not come around again.
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
I shall revenge myself in the cruelest way you can imagine. I shall forget it.
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
I must go over into the interior valleys. ... There are five thousand families starving to death over there, not just hungry but actually starving.
Letter to Elizabeth Otis (1938)
When the virus of restlessness begins to take possession of a wayward man, and the road away from Here seems broad and straight and sweet, the victim must first find himself a good and sufficient reason for going.
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
Well, God knows he don't need any brains to buck barley bags. But don't you try to put nothing over, Milton. I got my eye on you.
Of Mice and Men (1937)
In every bit of honest writing in the world ... there is a base theme. Try to understand men, if you understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well never leads to hate and nearly always leads to love.
Journal entry (1938)