“Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“The flies have conquered the flypaper.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir--but I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brave man will have made them a little braver.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Defeat is a momentary thing. A defeat doesn't last. We were defeated and now we attack. Defeat means nothing. Can't you understand that? Do you know what they are whispering behind doors?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“In marching, in mobs, in football games, and in war, outlines become vague; real things become unreal and a fog creeps over the mind. Tension and excitement, weariness, movement--all merge in one great gray dream, so that when it is over, it is hard to remember how it was when you killed men or ordered them to be killed. Then other people who were not there tell you what it was like and you say vaguely, "yes, I guess that's how it was.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“I'm tired of people who have not been at war who know all about it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but I do have a choice of how I do it.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“They think that just because they have only one leader and one head, we are all like that. They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Only once or twice in her life had she ever understood all of him, but the part of him which she knew, she knew intricately and well. No little appetite or pain, no carelessness or meanness in him escaped her; no thought or dream or longing in him ever reached her. And yet several times in her life she had seen the stars.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Lanser said, "There are no peaceful people, when will you learn it? There are no friendly people, can't you understand that?”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“You are not a man anymore. You are a soldier. Your comfort is of no importance and your life isn’t of much importance. Most of your orders will be unpleasant, but that’s not your business.They should’ve trained you for this, and not for flower-strewn streets. They should have built your soul with truth, not led along with lies.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“They know that ten heads lopped off will destroy them, but we are a free people; we have as many heads as we have people, and in a time of need leaders pop up among us like mushrooms.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“And the girl,' Lanser continued, 'the girl, Lieutenant, you may rape her, or protect her, or marry her--that is of no importance so long as you shoot her when it is ordered.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“That is a great mystery,” said Doctor Winter. “That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“The Mayor spoke proudly. 'Yes, they will light it. I have no choice of living or dying, you see, sir, but—I do have a choice of how I do it. If I tell them not to fight, they will be sorry, but they will fight. If I tell them to fight, they will be glad, and I who am not a very brae man will have made them a little braver.' He smiled apologetically. 'You see, it is an easy thing to do, since the end for me is the same.'
Lanser said, "If you say yes, we can tell them you said no. We can tell them you begged for your life.'
And Winter broke in angrily, 'They would know. You do not keep secrets. One of your men got out of hand one night and he said the flies had conquered the flypaper, and now the whole nation knows his words. They have made a song of it. The flies have conquered the flypaper. You do not keep secrets, Colonel.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“And the hatred was deep in the eyes of the people, beneath the surface.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Joseph habitually scowled at furniture, expecting it to be impertinent, mischievous, or dusty.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“If he considered God at all, he thought of Him as an old and honored general, retired and gray, living among remembered battles and putting wreaths on the graves of his lieutenants several times a year.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Lanser had been in Belgium and France twenty years before and he tried not to think what he knew—that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Captain Loft believed that all women fall in love with a uniform and he did not see how it could be otherwise.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“That is a mystery that has disturbed rulers all over the world—how the people know. It disturbs the invaders now, I am told, how news runs through censorships, how the truth of things fights free of control. It is a great mystery.” The”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“The gilded chairs covered with their worn tapestry were set about stiffly like too many servants with nothing to do.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“[O]nly Colonel Lanser knew what war really is in the long run . . . and he tried not to think what he knew--that war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for a new weariness and new hatreds.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
“Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that is so, sir.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Moon Is Down
John Steinbeck
Born place: in Salinas Valley, California, The United States
Born date February 27, 1902
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“And so whether you were six with the chicken pox, nine with the flu, twelve with a broken arm, or fifteen with menstrual cramps, you could count on sixty solid minutes with the company of that old seventies set, lots of one-dollar bets, and advice to neuter your pet, all crunched into the best sick-day game show yet!”
― Neil Pasricha, quote from The Book of Awesome
“And that was about all that he really wished the world to know about himself. “I am a nobody,” he would write toward the end of the century, when fame had begun to creep up on him. “Treat me as a solar myth, or an echo, or an irrational quantity, or ignore me altogether.” But”
― Simon Winchester, quote from The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
“When did you get so smart?"
He tapped his forehead. "Brain transplant. They put in a whale's. I'm passing all my classes with my eyes closed now, but I just can't get over this craving for krill." He shrugged. "And I feel sorry for the whale that got my brain. Probably swimming around Florida now trying to catch glimpses of girls in bikinis.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, quote from Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception
“I admired him more than anyone but I didn't wish him well. It was that I preferred him to me and wanted to be him. I coveted his talents, face, style. I wanted to wake up with them all transferred to me.”
― Hanif Kureishi, quote from The Buddha of Suburbia
“She had crept away from his bed, leaving him asleep across the jumbled sheets. She'd closed the bathroom door softly behind her. Standing naked before the mirror, she'd stared at the girl she saw there. At the disheveled hair and smeared mascara and lips that he'd kissed. Slowly shaking her head at the image in the mirror, the thought played over and over in her mind like a scratched track on a CD: Why? Why did you do it? Why did you let it happen? Then she'd turned away, covered her face with her hands, and cried. She would never again be the same person. She'd been irreversibly changed.”
― Amy Efaw, quote from After
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