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 profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.

Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.

It has always seemed strange to me... 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. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

It has always been my private conviction that any man who puts his intelligence up against a fish and loses had it coming.