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I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for it is the one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

— John Steinbeck East of Eden (1952)

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More quotes by John Steinbeck

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Journal of a Novel (1969)

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone.

East of Eden (1952)

Good God, what a mess of draggle-tail impulses a man is — and a woman too, I guess.

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)

Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man.

East of Eden (1952)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: John Steinbeck (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.