# John Steinbeck's best quotes

From Of Mice and Men and East of Eden to The Winter of Our Discontent and his letters and interviews: John Steinbeck's most quoted lines, with where they come from.

- 5 votes · 12 items
- Jul 2, 2023 · vinylhead_adelaide
- https://even.best/en/l/4705/john-steinbeck-s-best-quotes

## Top 12

1. **Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — East of Eden (1952).
2. **Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — East of Eden (1952).
3. **Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of a loss of power.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957).
4. **No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — The Winter of Our Discontent (1961).
5. **Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Interview with Robert van Gelder, 1947.
6. **Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It's just in their head.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Of Mice and Men (1937), Crooks.
7. **A problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Sweet Thursday (1954).
8. **No one wants advice — only corroboration.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Winter of Our Discontent (1961).
9. **To be alive at all is to have scars.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Winter of Our Discontent (1961).
10. **We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — 'In Awe of Words', The Exonian (1930).
11. **The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Newsweek, 24 December 1962.
12. **Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Quoted by John Kenneth Galbraith in The Affluent Society (1977 edition).

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.