Fahrenheit 451 Book Quotes

The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.

The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.

Out of the nursery into the college and back into the nursery; there’s your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.

Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.

Only if the third necessary thing could be given us. Number one, as I said: quality of information. Number two: leisure to digest it. And number three: the right to carry out actions based on what we learn from the interaction of the first two.

I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.

Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we're hated so much?

The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

Do you ever read any of the books you burn?" He laughed. "That's against the law!" "Oh. Of course.

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none.

We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing.

We have everything we need to be happy but we aren't happy. Something is missing... It is not books you need, it's some of the things that are in books. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.

That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.

Those who don't build must burn.

With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word 'intellectual,' of course, became the swear word it deserved to be.

Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going a long time back. I said nothing. I am one of the innocents who could have spoken up and out when no one would listen to the 'guilty,' but I did not speak and thus became guilty myself.

Most of us can't rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for... are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.

It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God.

Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.

To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes.

I have nothing from my childhood. I think you carry those books with you. It's like in [Ray] Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Books are outlawed in this future society so people become the book they love by memorizing it.

There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there.

Don't judge a book by its cover 'til you've read the book.

Don't judge a book by its cover

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.

There is more than one way to burn a book.

Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.