John Steinbeck

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."

"All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal."

"Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen."

"The comfortable people want only waking and sleeping, eating and excreting, working and reproducing."

"In every conceivable manner, the family is link to our past, bridge to our future, and bonds to one another."

"We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome."

"Maybe that's the whole trouble. It's easy to have ideals, but it's hard to have ideals and make money too."

"There is a part of all of us that longs to know ourselves in time."

"Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life."

"Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently."

"The writer must believe that what he is doing is the most important thing in the world."

"Man can endure what man can endure."

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty."

"A man is never so helpless and no more vulnerable than when he believes himself loved."

"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."

"I wonder how many people I've looked at all my life and never seen."

"In writing, habit seems to be a much safer doctrine than inspiration."

"The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer."

"Power and responsibility do not come to those who seek them."

"Each in his own way is strong if he knows he is strong."

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."

"Unless a man has thought deeply, he cannot act rightly."

"A man with a plan can accomplish anything, but a man without one cannot."

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good."

"The secret to surviving life in prison is to always have something to look forward to."

"A teacher takes a hand, opens a mind, and touches a heart."

"The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."

"If you understand each other you will be kind to each other."

"Morality does not come from God. God is the invention of morality."

"What good is the moon if you end up alone?"