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John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck Quotes

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Famous John Steinbeck Quotes

“The design of a book is the pattern of a reality controlled and shaped by the mind of the writer. This is completely understood about poetry or fiction, but it is too seldom realized about books of fact. And yet the impulse which drives a man to poetry will send another man into the tide pools and force him to try to report what he finds there.... It would be good to know the impulse truly, not to be confused by the 'services to science' platitudes or the other little mazes into which we entice our minds so that they will not know what we are doing.”

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Book:The Log from the Sea of Cortez
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“I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.”

IfsTryingMindI CanHateFightingLostOne ThingGloryBuiltI HatePatternsPreservesBeastInspectionEast Of EdenTravels With Charley
Book:East of Eden
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“Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit. My three [great teachers] did not tell - they catalyzed a burning desire to know. Under their influence, the horizons sprung wide and fear went away and the unknown became knowable. But most important of all, the truth, that dangerous stuff, became beautiful and very precious.”

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Author:John Steinbeck
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“The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.”

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Author:John Steinbeck
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“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. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

InspirationalMindBelieveHumansArtMightSpiritArtistEducationTeachTeacherTeachingMediumsHuman MindGreat ArtistGreat TeacherBest TeacherBeliveEducation And TeachersTeaching And EducationTeachers And TeachingTeaching EducationInspirational TeacherGreat TeachingBeing A TeacherTeachers DayTeacher AppreciationParents And TeachersInspirational EducationalArt TeacherThanking TeachersEducating OthersThank You TeacherTeaching ArtTeaching OthersHappy Teachers DayTeacher Appreciation WeekTeacher Training
Book:America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
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“After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.”

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Book:The Pastures of Heaven
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“I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted. Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has. How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the results of the black reasoning. And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it.”

KnowsMenMindBelieveHumansDoeSometimesWholeProblemPainJoyI BelieveCausesBlackDarkSleepResultsMorningKnowingBloodActivityConcernTechniqueAcceptedReasoningJustifyHuman MindChestsEcstasyStomachBubblesElectricNot KnowingRejectedFacetsNew DirectionsClearness
Book:East of Eden
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“Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. 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.”

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Author:John Steinbeck
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“And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.”

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Book:East of Eden
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“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy - that's the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

ThinkingShouldMindLongMatterSeemsWould BeJoyInterestMemoriesStrangeTragedyPostsDullReasonableRoutineWoundedContradictoryIntervalsDurationDrapes
Book:East of Eden
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“He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.”

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Book:East of Eden
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“Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.”

MindHumansArtMightSpiritTeachTeacherTeachingMediumsHuman MindGreat ArtistGreat TeacherGood TeacherBest TeacherEducation And TeachersTeaching And EducationTeachers And TeachingTeaching EducationInspirational TeacherGreat TeachingBeing A TeacherGood TeachingTeachers DayTeacher AppreciationParents And TeachersInspirational EducationalArt TeacherThanking TeachersEducating OthersThank You TeacherTeaching ArtShort TeacherHappy Teachers DayTeacher Appreciation WeekTeacher Training
Book:America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction
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“I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.”

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Book:Travels with Charley in Search of America
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