After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do t… - John Steinbeck

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After a while you'll think no thought the others do not think. You'll know no word the others can't say. And you'll do things because the others do them. You'll feel the danger in any difference whatever-a danger to the crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men...Once in a while there is a man who won't do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They'll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if you can't finally give in, they'll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside — neither part of themselves, nor yet free...They only do it to protect themselves. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can't allow a question to weaken it.

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About John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968) was an American writer. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, his works include the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1940), both of which examine the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Great Depression.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Jeffery Ernest Steinbeck
Alternative Names: John Ernst Steinbeck, Jr. John Ernst Steinbeck John Ernest Steinbeck John Ernst Steinbeck Jr Steinbeck

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Additional quotes by John Steinbeck

They was this rich fella, an he makes like he’s poor, an they’s this rich girl, an she purtends like she’s poor too, an’ they meet in a hamburg’ stan’
Why?
I don’t know why-that’s how it was.
Why’d they purtend like they’s poor?
Well, they’re tired of bein’ rich.
Horseshit!
You want to hear this, or not?
Well, go on then. Sure, I wanta hear it, but if I was rich, if I was rich I’d get so many pork chops-I’d cord ‘em up aroun’ me like wood, an’ I’d eat my way out. Go on.

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This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But i have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.

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