John Steinbeck Quotes about Responsibility

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There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.

There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.

John Steinbeck

Responsibility, Air, Space

John Steinbeck (2002). “East of Eden”, p.398, Penguin

People need responsibility. They resist assuming it, but they cannot get along without it.

John Steinbeck

Responsibility, People, Needs

We have usurped many of the powers we once ascribed to God. Fearful and unprepared, we have assumed lordship over the life or death of the whole world of all living things. The danger and the glory and the choice rest finally in man. The test of his perfectibility is at hand. Having taken Godlike power, we must seek in ourselves for the responsibility and the wisdom we once prayed some deity might have.

John Steinbeck

God, Taken, Responsibility

John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.147, Penguin

Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962

John Steinbeck

Responsibility, Games, Cities

John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.1250, Penguin UK

It is customary for the recipient of this award to offer personal or scholarly comment on the nature and the direction of literature. At this particular time, however, I think it would be well to consider the high duties and the responsibilities of the makers of literature.

John Steinbeck

Responsibility, Thinking, Awards

William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill, John Steinbeck (1971). “William Faulkner, Eugene O'Neill [and] John Steinbeck”