“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 , book The Log from the Sea of Cortez

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

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "We sat on a crate of oranges and thought what good men most biologists are, the tenors of the scientific world — temper…" by John Steinbeck?

John Steinbeck 366

American writer 1902–1968

Related quotes

“You hear that boy laughing?—you think he’s all fun;
But the angels laugh, too, at the good he has done;
The children laugh loud as they troop to his call,
And the poor man that knows him laughs loudest of all.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Boys; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

'It's a bore,' he said out loud.

'What is, my dear?'

'Anything you do too bloody long.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: The Complete Short Stories

“He is greatest who is most often in men’s good thoughts.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Greatness
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIV - Higgledy-Piggledy

“But we should kill him!'
'No. You've been listen to Brocando too often,' said Bane.
Brocando bristled. 'You know what he is! Why not kill--' he began, but he was interrupted.
'Because it doesn't matter what he is. It matters what we are.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

“As there are misanthropists, or haters of men, there are also misologists or haters of ideas, and both spring from the same cause, which is ignorance of the world. Misanthropy arises from too great confidence of inexperience; you trust a man and think him altogether true and good and faithful, and then in a little while he turns out to be false and knavish; and then another and another, and when this has happened several times to a man, especially within the circle of his most trusted friends, as he deems them, and he has often quarreled with them, he at last hates all men, and believes that no one has any good in him at all. …The reason is that a man, having to deal with other men, has no knowledge of them; for if he had knowledge he would have known the true state of the case, that few are the good and few the evil, and that the great majority are in the interval between them.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

Plato, Phaedo

“He would make a good manager, but he had a little too much integrity to survive in a top job.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, The Engines of God (1994), Chapter 12 (p. 161)

“I think maybe part of what got him into trouble was that he did too much thinking. Sometimes he tried too hard to make sense of the world, to figure out why people were bad to each other so often.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

“Ford Prefect suppressed a little giggle of evil satisfaction, realized that he had no reason to suppress it, and laughed out loud, a wicked laugh.”

Douglas Adams book So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Source: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“He was a good sportsman too. He was an excellent fast bowler and a good fielder. He was also a very good kabaddi player.”

Rajinikanth (1950) Indian actor

Ramachandra Rao, whom Shivaji affectionately used to call Kaddi (stick) Ramu because he was as thin as a rod.
You can see God in him at times (22 December 1999)

“He [Turing] was particularly fond of little programming tricks (some people would say that he was too fond of them to be a "good" programmer) and would chuckle with boyish good humor at any little tricks I may have used.”

James H. Wilkinson (1919–1986) English mathematician

Some Comments from a Numerical Analyst (1971)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

John Steinbeck 366

Related quotes

Related topics