John Steinbeck Quotes

We know next to nothing of what we're going to know in 20 or 50 years.

Five hundred years before Christ was born, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus told his students that "everything changes except the law of change". He said: "You cannot step in the same river twice." The river changes every second; and so does the man who stepped in it. Life is a ceaseless change. The only certainty is today. Why mar the beauty of living today by trying to solve the problems of a future that is shrouded in ceaseless change and uncertainty-a future that no one can possibly foretell?

One day the "Don't Knows" will get in and then where will we be?

That's stupid. If anyone sees themselves in ten years they're lying to themselves first.

We don't know the days that will change our lives. Probably just as well.

I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?

There was no way to know that certainty would one day become a luxury, too.

The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane.

When we speak of the morrow nothing is ever certain.

Even people capable of living in the past don't really know what the future holds.

Life has a way of doing that; one minute everything makes sense, the next, things change. People get sick. Families break apart, your friends could close the door on you.

I try not to make plans. Because, even the best laid plans etc. etc.

We are not sure of sorrow, And joy was never sure; Today will die tomorrow; Time stoops to no man's lure.

And tomorrow--who knows what happens? Do you get it? I don't know and no one knows--it's all unknown! You understand, that this is the end to the Known? This is the new, the improbable, the unpredictable.

Security is elusive. It's impossible. We all die. We all get old. We all get sick. People leave us. People change us. Nothing is secure.

Where will I be five years from now? I delight in not knowing. That's one of the greatest things about life its wonderful surprises.

The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you.

But nothing in life was set in stone and nothing in life is promised us. Not happiness, not joy, not love. Everything was variable and mutable and inconstant.

Thoughts and pictures come to my mind... thoughts from before the year 1914 when there was real peace, quiet and security on this earth - a time when we didn't know fear... Security and quiet have disappeared from the lives of men since 1914.

Anyway, it doesn't matter how much, how often, or how closely you keep an eye on things because you can't control it. Sometimes things and people just go. Just like that.

Tell Greece that her spring has been taken out of her year.

The future can ever promise but one thing and one thing only: surprises.

Never say never. In your life you never know what's going to happen next.

How hard it is to project oneself into the future. We are always prone to think of the conditions which are with us today as being permanent conditions.