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John Steinbeck Quotes about Children

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How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

John Steinbeck
Children, Men, Wrath
John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.190, Hamilton Books

When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

John Steinbeck
Wise, Jobs, Children

Perhaps it takes courage to raise children.

John Steinbeck
Mother, Children, Parenting
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.132, Penguin

It is not enough to say that we cannot know or judge because all the information is not in. The process of gathering knowledge does not lead to knowing. A child's world spreads only a little beyond his understanding while that of a great scientist thrusts outward immeasurably. An answer is invariably the parent of a great family of new questions. So we draw worlds and fit them like tracings against the world about us, and crumple them when we find they do not fit and draw new ones.

John Steinbeck
Children, Knowledge, Science
John Steinbeck (1943). “Steinbeck”

I think today if we forbade our illiterate children to touch the wonderful things of our literature, perhaps they might steal them and find secret joy.

John Steinbeck
Children, Thinking, Joy
John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.25, Penguin

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it - once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough.

John Steinbeck
New York, Children, Dirty
John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.44, Penguin

Yes, you will. And I will warn you now that not their blood but your suspicion might build evil in them. They will be what you expect of them…I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb." "You can’t make a race horse of a pig." "No," said Samuel, "but you can make a very fast pig.

John Steinbeck
Horse, Children, Men

I remember as a child reading or hearing the words 'The Great Divide' and being stunned by the glorious sound, a proper sound for the granite backbone of a continent. I saw in my mind escarpments rising into the clouds, a kind of natural Great Wall of China.

John Steinbeck
Children, Wall, Reading
John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.93, Penguin

When you're a child you're the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They're only ghosts furnished for you to talk to.

John Steinbeck
Children, People, Ghost
John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.506, Penguin

A wife is like a children's movie; always under-appreciated and without either, life would be incomplete.

John Steinbeck
Thank You, Children, Wife

The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things that hold a man down.

John Steinbeck
Children, Home, Men
John Steinbeck (1995). “To a God Unknown”, p.70, Penguin

We have not known a single great scientist who could not discourse freely and interestingly with a child. Can it be that haters of clarity have nothing to say, have observed nothing, have no clear picture of even their own fields?

John Steinbeck
Children, Science, Fields
John Steinbeck (1995). “The Log from the Sea of Cortez”, p.80, Penguin

Some people there are who, being grown; forget the horrible task of learning to read. It is perhaps the greatest single effort that the human undertakes, and he must do it as a child.

John Steinbeck
Children, People, Effort
John Steinbeck (2008). “The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.10, Penguin

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child.

John Steinbeck
Children, Fall, Men
John Steinbeck (1980). “Travels with Charley in Search of America”, p.15, Penguin

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