The Grapes Of Wrath Quotes

“And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. The great owners ignored the three cries of history. The land fell into fewer hands, the number of the dispossessed increased, and every effort of the great owners was directed at repression. The money was spent for arms, for gas to protect the great holdings, and spies were sent to catch the murmuring of revolt so that it might be stamped out. The changing economy was ignored, plans for the change ignored; and only means to destroy revolt were considered, while the causes of revolt went on.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Then it don' matter. Then I'll be all aroun' in the dark. I'll be ever'where - wherever you look. Wherever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. If Casy knowed, why, I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an' - I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build, why, I'll be there.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Some of the owner men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated the mathematics that drove them, and some were afraid, and some worshiped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from thought and from feeling. If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank - or the Company - needs - wants - insists - must have - as though the Bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility for the banks or the companies because they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slaves to such cold and powerful masters. The owner men sat in the cars and explained. You know the land is poor. You've scrabbled at it long enough, God knows.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Why, Tom - us people will go on livin' when all them people is gone. Why, Tom, we're the people that live. They ain't gonna wipe us out. Why, we're the people - we go on.'

'We take a beatin' all the time.'

'I know.' Ma chuckled. 'Maybe that makes us tough. Rich fellas come up an' they die, an' their kids ain't no good, an' they die out. But, Tom, we keep a-comin'. Don' you fret none, Tom. A different time's comin'.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The last clear definite function of man—muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need—this is man....For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man—when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back. This you may say and know it and know it. This you may know when the bombs plummet out of the black planes on the market place, when prisoners are stuck like pigs, when the crushed bodies drain filthily in the dust. You may know it in this way. If the step were not being taken, if the stumbling-forward ache were not alive, the bombs would not fall, the throats would not be cut. Fear the time when the bombs stop falling while the bombers live—for every bomb is proof that the spirit has not died. And fear the time when the strikes stop while the great owners live—for every little beaten strike is proof that the step is being taken. And this you can know—fear the time when Manself will not suffer and die for a concept, for this one quality is the foundation of Manself, and this one quality is man, distinctive in the universe.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“But you can't start. Only a baby can start. You and me - why, we're all that's been. The anger of a moment, the thousand pictures, that's us. This land, this red land, is us; and the flood years and the dust years and the drought years are us. We can't start again. The bitterness we sold to the junk man - he got it all right, but we have it still. And when the owner men told us to go, that's us; and when the tractor hit the house, that's us until we're dead. To California or any place - every one a drum major leading a parade of hurts, marching with our bitterness. And some day - the armies of bitterness will all be going the same way. And they'll all walk together, and there'll be a dead terror from it.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“We're sorry. It's not us. It's the monster. The bank isn't a man. The bank isn't like a man.
Yes, but the bank is only made of men.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“We'll start over. But you can't start. Only a baby can start”
― John Steinbeck

“I ain't sleepin'. I got too much to puzzle with.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I ain't gonna try to teach 'em nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“And her eyes were on the highway, where life whizzed by.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I'm glad there's love here. That's all.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I climb fences when i got fences to climb.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“They had not grown up in the paradoxes of industry. Their senses were still sharp to the ridiculousness of the industrial life.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I became aware of Jews in my early teens, as I started to pick up the signals from the Christian church. Not that I was Christian – I’d been an atheist since I was five. But my father, a Congregational minister, had some sympathy with the idea that the Jews had killed Christ. But any indoctrination was offset by my discovery of the concentration camps, of the Final Solution. Whilst the term 'Holocaust' had yet to enter the vocabulary I was overwhelmed by my realisation of what Germany had perpetrated on Jews. It became a major factor in my movement towards the political left. I’d already read 'The Grapes of Wrath' by John Steinbeck, the Penguin paperback that would change my life. The story of the gas chambers completed the process of radicalisation and would, just three years later, lead me to join the Communist Party.”
― Phillip Adams

“Look out for luck. You can't trus' luck.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I was mean life a wolf. Now i'm mean like a weasel. When you're huntin' somepin you're a hunter, an' you're strong. Can't nobody beat a hunter. But when you get hunted--that's different. Somepin happens to you. You ain't strong; maybe you're fierce, but you ain't strong. I been hunted now for a long time. I ain't no hunter no more.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“We got to get thinkin' about doin' stuff that means somepin.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“An' I got to thinkin', on'y it wasn't thinkin', it was deeper down than thinkin'.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“You got to think about that day, an' then the nex' day. Jus' take ever' day.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“It ain't kin we? It's will we?”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“I never fixed no car in my life 'thout cuttin' myself. Now it's done I don't have to worry no more.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Jus' live the day. Don' worry yaself.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Woman can change better'n man,''
''Woman got all her life in her arms. Man got it all in his head.”
― John Stienbeck

“This here ol' man jus' lived a life an' just died out of it. I don' know whether he was good or bad, but that don't matter much. He was alive, an' that's what matters.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Her face looked for the answer that is always concealed in language.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“The last clear definite function of man - muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need - this is man. To build a wall, to build a house, a dam, and in the wall and house and dam to put something of Manself, and to Manself take back something of the wall, the house the dam; to take hard muscles from the lifring, to take the clear lines and form from conceiving. For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“-ain't you thinkin' what's it gonna be like when we get there? ain't you scared it won't be nice like we thought?
-no, she said quickly. no, I ain't. you can't do that. I can't do that. it's too much livin' too many lives. up ahead they's a thousan' lives we might live but when it comes, it'll on'y be one.”
― John Steinbeck

“It was her habit to build laughter out of inadequate materials.”
― John Steinbeck

“The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
― John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath