John Steinbeck Quotes

I think everything I have done in my life, my reasons at the time were right no matter how things worked out.

The idea behind 'Defending Your Life': Imagine if you had to sit in a courtroom and watch your life. I don't care who you are - if you committed a crime and you had to have all of your emails searched and made public, who on this planet could survive that? Nobody.

The choice of life is not between fame and fortune, nor wealth and poverty, but between good and evil.

I'm not any more moral than my neighbors.

I'm sure there's a right way and there's a wrong way. The bottom line is you have to do what you think is right.

I stand by every decision I've made throughout my career and my life, good or bad, up or down.

The essence of morality is a questioning about morality; and the decisive move of human life is to use ceaselessly all light to look for the origin of the opposition between good and evil.

I've got a life, you know, take me in the totality of my actions and I'll tell you, I will stand with my record.

In Survivor and Finder's Fee, it is about what you would do if you could get away with it. Survivor is about your own integrity and where you draw your own ethical and moral lines. There are no rules.

I'm the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for.

Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.

The evil that we know is best.

Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is good... Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

I may be revered or defamed and decried; But I tried to live my life right.

Do not do an immoral thing for moral reasons.

There is a contest old as Eden, which still goes on - the conflict between right and wrong, between error and truth. In this conflict every human being has a part.

I look back on my life like everybody does but not just career. I mean I look back on my life as a whole, so I don't think that I dwell there or anything and in terms of work I hope that there is a lot in front of me.

We may draw good out of evil; we must not do evil, that good may come.

I try not to do anything that's immoral.

I believe I'm a better authority than anybody else in America on my own wife. I have never known a person with a stronger sense of right and wrong in my life ever.

It’s not Right vs. Left; it’s Right vs. Wrong.

The idea of 'breaking bad' and what that means in terms of the actions and decisions people make, and why they make them - it makes people question themselves in the 'What would I do?' kind of way.

To see the line between being good and bad is really thin. It's not easy for anyone, not the manager, the players or the staff.

Do I have any regrets about my life? No.

Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just.