John Steinbeck idézet oldal 11

„Rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor a bombák már nem hullanak, de a bombavetők még élnek, mert minden bomba annak a bizonysága, hogy a szellem még nem halt meg. Rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor megszűnnek a sztrájkok, de élnek még a nagybirtokosok, mert minden levert kis sztrájk is bizonyítéka annak, hogy a lépés megtörtént. És rettegjünk attól az időtől, amikor az ember nem akar szenvedni és meghalni egy gondolatért, mert ez az egyetlen tulajdonság különbözteti meg az embert minden mástól a világegyetemben.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Ha neki egymillió hold kell, hogy gazdagnak érezze magát, az bizonyára azért van, mert belül rettentően szegénynek érzi magát; ha pedig belül szegény, millió holdtól sem fogja magát gazdagnak érezni, s talán azért csalódott, mert ezt az érzést semmi sem szerezheti meg neki.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„A bérlő elgondolkozott: Furcsa dolog ez. Ha valakinek van egy kis birtoka, az a birtok ő maga, hozzá tartozik, olyan, mint ő. Ha csak olyan birtoka van, hogy járhat rajta, művelheti, szomorkodhatik, ha rossz a termés, örülhet az esőnek, akkor az a birtok ő maga, s maga is megnövekszik valahogy, amiért a birtok az övé. Még ha sikertelenül gazdálkodik, akkor is megnöveli a birtoka. Ez így van.
A bérlő tovább gondolkozott: De ha olyan birtoka van az embernek, amit nem lát, vagy nem ér rá, hogy a maga kezével művelje, vagy nem lehet ott, hogy járjon rajta, hát akkor a birtok az úr. Az ember nem teheti azt, amit akar, nem gondolhatja azt, amit akar. A birtok az úr, erősebb a gazdájánál. S a gazda kisebb lesz, nem nagyobb. Csak a birtok a nagy, ő pedig szolgája a birtokának. Ez is így van.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Bármi, ami csak pénzbe kerül, olcsó.”

Érik a gyümölcs

„Talán mindenki ebben az egész átkozott világban fél egymástol.”

„Az igazságban több szépség van, még ha félelmetes szépség is.”

„A hatalom nem korrupt. A félelem az... a hatalom elvesztésétől való félelem.”

„Az ötletek olyanok, mint a nyulak. Szerzel egy párat, megtanulod kezelni őket, és hamarosan lesz belőlük egy tucat.”

„És a kis sikoltozó tény, amely az egész történelem során hangzik: Az elnyomás csak arra jó, hogy megerősítse és keményebbé gyúrja az elnyomottakat.”

„És most, hogy nem kell tökéletesnek lenned, jó is lehetsz.”

„Úgy gondolom, hogy egy erős nő erősebb lehet, mint egy férfi, különösen, ha véletlenül szerelem van a szívében. Úgy gondolom, hogy egy szerető nő elpusztíthatatlan.”

„Büszke vagy a fájdalmadra? Nagynak és tragikusnak tűnsz tőled? Nos, gondold át. Lehet, hogy csak a nagy színpadon játszol egy szerepet és magad vagy a közönség.”

„Számomra úgy tűnik, hogy ha neked vagy nekem kétféle gondolkodás vagy cselekvés közül kell választanunk, emlékeznünk kell a halálunkra és meg kell próbálnunk úgy élni, hogy halálunk ne okozzon örömet a világnak.”

„Gyakori tapasztalat, hogy egy probléma, amely nehéznek tűnik éjjel, reggelre megoldódik, miután az alvás bizottsága dolgozott rajta.”

„Az, hogy egyáltalán életben vagyunk, azt jelenti, hogy vannak sebhelyeink.”

„Egy szomorú lélek gyorsabban, sokkal gyorsabban megölhet, mint egy baktérium.”

„Elveszettnek születtem, és nem örülök, ha megtalálnak.”

„Ha megtanulnánk szeretni magunkat, akár csak egy kicsit is, talán a kegyetlenségünk és a dühünk is feloldódna.”

„Ahogy az néha megtörténik, egy pillanat megállapodott és lebegett, és sokkal tovább maradt, mint egy pillanat. És a hangok megálltak, és a mozgás is megállt egy pillanatnál sokkal, de sokkal többre.”

“They successfully combined piracy and puritanism, which aren't so unlike when you come right down to it. Both had a strong dislike for opposition and both had a roving eye for other people's property.”

John Steinbeck: Idézetek angolul

“I'm sorry," Ethan said. "You have taught me something — maybe three things, rabbit footling mine. Three things will never be believed — the true, the probable, and the logical. I know now where to get the money to start my fortune.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter III

“Give a critic an inch, he’ll write a play.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part One, Chapter II

“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.”

On Critics
Writers at Work (1977)

“It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "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.”

John Steinbeck könyv Sweet Thursday

Forrás: Sweet Thursday (1954), Ch. 20

“He wasn't involved with a race that could build a thing it had to escape from.”

John Steinbeck könyv Cannery Row

Cannery Row (1945)

“"Well, that glove's fulla vaseline."
"Vaseline? What the hell for?"
Well, I tell ya what — Curley says he's keepin' that hand soft for his wife."”

Pt. 3
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“Even while I protest the assembly-line production of our food, our songs, our language, and eventually our souls, I know that it was a rare home that baked good bread in the old days. Mother’s cooking was with rare exceptions poor, that good unpasteurized milk touched only by flies and bits of manure crawled with bacteria, the healthy old-time life was riddled with aches, sudden death from unknown causes, and that sweet local speech I mourn was the child of illiteracy and ignorance. It is the nature of a man as he grows older, a small bridge in time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Forrás: Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 2, p. 29

“He wondered why he stayed with her. Just pure laziness, he guessed. He didn't want to go through the emotional turmoil of leaving her. In spite of himself he'd worry about her and it was too much trouble. He'd need another woman right away and that took a lot of talking and arguing and persuading. It was different just to lay a girl but he would need a woman around, and that was the difference. You got used to one and it was less trouble. […]
But there was another reason too. She loved him. She really did. And he knew it. And you can't leave a thing like that. It's a structure and it has an architecture, and you can't leave it without tearing off a piece of yourself. So if you want to remain whole you stay no matter how much you may dislike staying. Juan was not a man who fooled himself very much.”

Pt. 2
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“He was a fine steady man, Juan Chicoy, part Mexican and part Irish, perhaps fifty years old, with clear black eyes, a good head of hair, and a dark and handsome face. Mrs Chicoy was insanely in love with him and a little afraid of him too, because he was a man, and there aren't very many of them, as Alice Chicoy had found out. There aren't very many of them in the world, as everyone finds out sooner or later.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Wayward Bus

Forrás: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 8

“Prayer never brought in no side-meat. Takes a shoat to bring in pork.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Wayward Bus

Forrás: The Wayward Bus (1947), Ch. 1

“There's nobody as lonely as an all-married man.”

John Steinbeck könyv Érik a gyümölcs

The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

“Four hoarse blasts of a ship’s whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

Forrás: The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), Part Two, Chapter XXI

“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

Pt. 1
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“The profession of book-writing makes horse-racing seem like a solid, stable business.”

As quoted in A Short History of Progress (2004) by Ronald Wright. This has since been cited as a direct quote by some, but the remark may simply be a paraphrase, as no quotation marks appear around the statement and no earlier publication of this phrasing has been located.
This is perhaps an incorrect quote from Steinbeck's article "A Primer on the '30s." Esquire, June 1960: 85-93.
"Except for the field organizers of strikes, who were pretty tough monkeys and devoted, most of the so-called Communists I met were middle-class, middle-aged people playing a game of dreams. I remember a woman in easy circumstances saying to another even more affluent: 'After the revolution even we will have more, won't we, dear?' Then there was another lover of proletarians who used to raise hell with Sunday picknickers on her property.

"I guess the trouble was that we didn't have any self-admitted proletarians. Everyone was a temporarily embarrassed capitalist. Maybe the Communists so closely questioned by the investigation committees were a danger to America, but the ones I knew—at least they claimed to be Communists—couldn't have disrupted a Sunday-school picnic. Besides they were too busy fighting among themselves."
Disputed
Forrás: "John Steinbeck once said that socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires", [Ronald, Wright, A Short History of Progress, 2004, 124, Anansi Press, Toronto, https://books.google.com/books?id=nzWPFQIEvfEC&q=%22temporarily+embarrassed+millionaires%22#v=snippet&q=%22temporarily%20embarrassed%20millionaires%22&f=false]

“In my heart there may be doubt that I deserve the Nobel award over other men of letters whom I hold in respect and reverence — but there is no question of my pleasure and pride in having it for myself.
It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights

The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976), but a statement he is first quoted as having made in Newsweek (24 December 1962)

“Books ain't no good. A guy needs somebody — to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody.”

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

“We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world — temperamental, moody, lecherous, loud-laughing, and healthy. […] Your true biologist will sing you a song as loud and off-key as will a blacksmith, for he knows that morals are too often diagnostic of prostatitis and stomach ulcers. Sometimes he may proliferate a little too much in all directions, but he is as easy to kill as any other organism, and meanwhile he is very good company, and at least he does not confuse a low hormone productivity with moral ethics.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Forrás: Of Mice and Men (1937), Ch. 4, p. 72

“The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit — for gallantry in defeat — for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally-flags of hope and of emulation.
I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man, has no dedication nor any membership in literature.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Log from the Sea of Cortez

Forrás: The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951), Chapter 4

“It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place — everyone must have one, although I have never heard of a man tell of it.”

Nobel Prize acceptance speech (1962)

“Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.”

John Steinbeck könyv The Winter of Our Discontent

The Winter of Our Discontent (1961), unplaced by chapter
Változat: It is odd how a man believes he can think better in a special place. I have such a place, have always had it, but I know it isn't thinking I do there, but feeling and experiencing and remembering. It's a safety place — everyone must have one, although I have never heard of a man tell of it.

“Mordeen said: "I used to wonder why this love seemed sweeter than I had ever known, better than many people ever know. And then one day the reason came to me. There are very few great Anythings in the world. In work and art and emotion—the great is very rare. And I have one of the great and beautiful. Now say your yah, yah, Victor, like a child unanswerably answering Wisdom. You will have to do that, I think."”

Pt. 4
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers.”

John Steinbeck könyv Burning Bright

Mordeen on her love for Joe Saul in Act One: The Circus
Burning Bright (1950)