John Dos Passos > Quotes

“We work to eat to get the strength to work to eat to get the strength to work.”
― John Dos Passos

“If there is a special Hell for writers it would be in the forced contemplation of their own works, with all the misconceptions, the omissions, the failures that any finished work of art implies.”
― John Dos Passos

“I never see the dawn that I don't say to myself perhaps.”
― John Dos Passos

“... life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.”
― John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers

“The young man walks by himself, fast but not fast enough, far but not far enough (faces slide out of sight, talk trails into tattered scraps, footsteps tap fainter in alleys); he must catch the last subway, the streetcar, the bus, run up the gangplanks of all the steamboats, register at all the hotels, work in the cities, answer the wantads, learn the trades, take up the jobs, live in all the boardinghouses, sleep in all the beds. One bed is not enough, one job is not enough, one life is not enough. At night, head swimming with wants, he walks by himself alone.”
― John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

“A novel is a commodity that fulfills a certain need; people need to buy daydreams like they need to buy ice cream or aspirin or gin. They even need to buy a pinch of intellectual catnip now and then to liven up their thoughts...”
― John Dos Passos, Novels 1920-1925: One Man's Initiation: 1917 / Three Soldiers / Manhattan Transfer

“The humblest citizen in all the land, when clad in the armour of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error." -John Dos Passos”
― John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

“The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich;”
― John Dos Passos, 1919

“self respect. self reliance. self control.”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

”
― James A. Baldwin

“One phrase stuck in Fainy’s mind, and he repeated it to himself after he had gone to bed that night: It is time for all honest men to band together to resist the ravages of greedy privilege.”
― John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

“With people who are young and aren't scared you can do lots.”
― John Dos Passos, One Man's Initiation-1917

“The terrible thing about having New York go stale on you is that there's nowhere else. It's the top of the world.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“But you’re out of another world old kid … You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”
― John Dos Passos

“While there is a lower class I am of it, while there is a criminal class I am of it, while there is a soul in prison I am not free.”
― John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

“Luther Burbank was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,
he walked through the woods one winter
crunching through the shinycrusted snow
stumbling into a little dell where a warm spring was
and found the grass green and weeds sprouting
and skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,
He went home and sat by the stove and read Darwin
Struggle for Existence Origin of Species Natural
Selection that wasn't what they taught in church,
so Luther Burbank ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,
found a seedball in a potato plant
sowed the seed and cashed in on Darwin’s Natural Selection
on Spencer and Huxley
with the Burbank potato.

Young man go west;
Luther Burbank went to Santa Rosa
full of his dream of green grass in winter ever-
blooming flowers ever-
bearing berries; Luther Burbank
could cash in on Natural Selection Luther Burbank
carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winter
and seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—
winters were bleak in that bleak
brick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—
out to sunny Santa Rosa;
and he was a sunny old man
where roses bloomed all year
everblooming everbearing
hybrids.

America was hybrid
America could cash in on Natural Selection.
He was an infidel he believed in Darwin and Natural
Selection and the influence of the mighty dead
and a good firm shipper’s fruit
suitable for canning.
He was one of the grand old men until the churches
and the congregations
got wind that he was an infidel and believed
in Darwin.
Luther Burbank had never a thought of evil,
selected improved hybrids for America
those sunny years in Santa Rosa.
But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;
he wouldn’t give up Darwin and Natural Selection
and they stung him and he died
puzzled.
They buried him under a cedartree.
His favorite photograph
was of a little tot
standing beside a bed of hybrid
everblooming double Shasta daisies
with never a thought of evil
And Mount Shasta
in the background, used to be a volcano
but they don’t have volcanos
any more.”
― John Dos Passos, The 42nd Parallel

“They have clubbed us off the streets they are stronger they are rich they hire and fire the politicians the newspapereditors the old judges the small men with reputations the collegepresidents the wardheelers (listen businessmen collegepresidents judges America will not forget her betrayers) they hire the men with guns the uniforms the policecars the patrolwagons all right you have won you will kill the brave men our friends tonight (author's punctuation)”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“Men are under as strong a compulsion to invent an ethical setting for their behavior as spiders are to weave themselves webs.”
― John Dos Passos

“How do I get to Broadway?...I want to get to the center of things.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“What's the use of a lague of nations if it's to be dominated by Great Britain and her colonies?" said Mr. Rasmussen sourly. "But don't you think any kind of a league's better than nothing?" said Eveline. "It's not the name you give things, it's who's getting theirs underneath that counts," said Robbins.

"That's a very cynical remark," said the California woman. "This isn't any time to be cynical."

"This is a time," said Robbins, "when if we weren't cynical we'd shoot ourselves.”
― John Dos Passos, 1919

“But the workingpeople, the common people, they won't allow it.' 'It's the common people who get most fun out of the torture and execution of great men.... If it's not going too far back I'd like to know who it was demanded the execution of our friend Jesus H. Christ.”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“So many Americans felt that their neighbor had no right to know more than they did.”
― John Dos Passos, Midcentury

“If there is a special Hades for writers is would be in the forced contemplation of their own works.”
― John Dos Passos

“If there are no permanent standards, there is no criticism possible.”
― John Dos Passos

“all right we are two nations”
― John Dos Passos, The Big Money

“I read and keep silent. I am one of the silent watchers. I know that every sentence, every word, every picayune punctuation that appears in the public press is perused and revised and deleted in the interests of advertisers and bondholders. The fountain of national life is poisoned at the source.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer: A Novel

“There was Babylon and Nineveh; they were built of brick. Athens was gold marble columns. Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble. In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn… Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscraper. Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will just glittering, pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer

“In a moment when criticism shows a singular dearth of direction every man has to be a law unto himself in matters of theatre, writing, and painting. While the American Mercury and the new Ford continue to spread a thin varnish of Ritz over the whole United States there is a certain virtue in being unfashionable.”
― John Dos Passos

“Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?”
― John Dos Passos, One Man's Initiation: 1917

“Do you know how long God took to destroy the Tower of Babel, folks? Seven minutes. Do you know how long the Lord God took to destroy Babylon and Nineveh? Seven minutes. There’s more wickedness in one block in New York City than there was in a square mile in Nineveh, and how long do you think the Lord God of Sabboath will take to destroy New York City and Brooklyn and the Bronx? Seven seconds. Seven Seconds.”
― John Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer