The quotations of

John Steinbeck

American writer

1902–1968

11 quotes, most often on Ideas and Emotion.

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
Interview with Robert van Gelder (April 1947), as quoted in John Steinbeck: A Biography (1994) by Jay Parini
- Ideas
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. It might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
“…like captured fireflies” (1955)
- Art
- Education
No one wants advice — only corroboration.
The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Ch. VI
- Advice
A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962), Pt. 2
- Emotion
- Health
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), Part One, Ch. III
- Knowledge
Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962), Pt. 4
- Football
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), Part 2, Ch. 13. i
- Ideas
Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
East of Eden (1952), Part 2, Ch. 13. i
- Ideas
In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969), entry of 29 January 1951
- Writing
We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.
“In Awe of Words”, written for The Exonian, Phillips Exeter Academy (c. 1954)
- Emotion
And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected.
East of Eden (1952), Part 2, Ch. 13
- Freedom
- Thinking

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