Louis L'Amour Quotes

. . . What do you wish to be? What would you like to become?”

I did not know, and I told her so, but the question worried me. Should I know?

“There is time,” she said, “but the sooner you know, the sooner you can plan. To have a goal is the important thing, and to work toward it. Then, if you decide you wish to do something different, you will at least have been moving, you will have been going somewhere, you will have been learning.

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human stories behind the events and leave the reader with a desire to know more.

We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.

We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different.

He never knew when he was whipped ... So he never was.......

There is nothing more dangerous than a woman with a shotgun. Because you don't know when it's going to go off...and neither does she.

Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.

Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.

Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some distance from it. One can be so overwhelmed by the forest as to miss seeing the trees.

violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for human rights, then men are really in trouble.

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

Often I hear people say they do not have time to read. That's absolute nonsense. In the one year during which I kept that kind of record, I read twenty-five books while waiting for people. In offices, applying for jobs, waiting to see a dentist, waiting in a restaurant for friends, many such places. I read on buses, trains, and plains. If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? Attending a ball game? Or learning something that can be with you your life long?

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They are the thread upon which it all hangs, and they can save us when all else is lost.

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers, for each rage leaves him less than he had been before - it takes something from him.