John Steinbeck Quotes

Men are victims of their own impulses.

I feel I should be doing stupid stuff, but I'm not going to.

I always feel like there's some behaviour that we're all capable - we have our inhibitions protecting from indulging in certain appetites or developing certain appetites.

Whenever we confront an unbridled desire we are surely in the presence of a tragedy-in-the-making.

As soon as one promises not to do something, it becomes the one thing above all others that one most wishes to do.

What can the will do when the heart commands?

I think everyone can relate to the idea of making a bad choice - and knowing it's a bad choice - but doing it anyway.

Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.

I think we all carry the seeds of our own destruction. You really have to be aware that just because something is good, it doesn't mean it's not going to trigger a self-destructive impulse.

We may not have demon fathers dangling offers of infernal power before us, but everyone understands what it means to struggle with temptation or resist the urge to give in to our baser natures.

Human beings can always be relied upon to exert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

Human nature is you get carried away, so we have to protect ourselves from ourselves.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Lust is an appetite that needs to be regulated.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

Sometimes we have an objective reality that tells you you shouldn’t do what you want to do.

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points.

Everyone deals with temptation. It's just there.

I need to protect myself from my own addictive impulse.

Self-control might be as passionate and as active as the surrender to passion.

I may be daft but I'm no' stupid!

Posterity! Why should people be less stupid tomorrow than they are today?

He that discovers himself, till he hath made himself master of his desires, lays himself open to his own ruin, and makes himself prisoner to his own tongue.