Gertrude Stein Quotes (114 Quotes)

Remarks are not literature.

Once more I can climb about and remind you that a woman in this epoch does the important literary thinking.

What is marriage, is marriage protection or religion, is marriage renunciation or abundance, is marriage a stepping-stone or an end. What is marriage.

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

A vegetable garden in the beginning looks so promising and then after all little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables.

Men cannot count, they do not know that two and two make four if women do not tell them so.

I do want to get rich but I never want to do what there is to do to get rich.

In France one must adapt oneself to the fragrance of a urinal.

It is not what France gave you but what it did not take from you that was important.

Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.

Every adolescent has that dream every century has that dream every revolutionary has that dream, to destroy the family.

But then of course a philosophy is not the same thing as a style.

It is always a mistake to be plain-spoken.

It is natural not to care about a sister certainly not when she is four years older and grinds her teeth at night.

A writer must always try to have a philosophy and he should also have a psychology and a philology and many other things. Without a philosophy and a psychology and all these various other things he is not really worthy of being called a writer.

It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for the future, none at all. It certainly is extraordinary, but it is certainly true.

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

There is no there there.

Oh, I wish I were a miser; being a miser must be so occupying.

Everybody thinks that this civilization has lasted a very long time but it really does take very few grandfathers' granddaughters to take us back to the dark ages.

It is extraordinary that when you are acquainted with a whole family you can forget about them.

Sculpture is made with two instruments and some supports and pretty air.

When they are alone they want to be with others, and when they are with others they want to be alone. After all, human beings are like that.

If you can do it then why do it?

Human beings are interested in two things. They are interested in the reality and interested in telling about it.

I don't envisage collectivism. There is no such animal, it is always individualism, sometimes the rest vote and sometimes they do not, and if they do they do and if they do not they do not.

I think the reason I am important is that I know everything.

Name any name and then remember everybody you ever knew who bore that name. Are they all alike. I think so.

Native always means people who belong somewhere else, because they had once belonged somewhere. That shows that the white race does not really think they belong anywhere because they think of everybody else as native.

Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

... money ... is really the difference between men and animals, most of the things men feel, animals feel, and vice versa, but animals do not know about money.

A diary means yes indeed.

In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.

History takes time. History makes memory.

What is music. A passion for colonies not a love of country.

It is funny the two things most men are proudest of is the thing that any man can do and doing does in the same way, that is being drunk and being the father of their son.

Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.

Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.

War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost.

The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

It is so friendly so simply friendly and though inevitable not a sadness and though occurring not a shock.

It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.

I write for myself and strangers. The strangers, dear readers, are an after-thought.

Supposing everyone lived at one time what would they say. They would observe that stringing string beans is universal.

The thing that differentiates man from animals is money.

Do you know because I tell you so, or do you know, do you know.

What is the answer? In that case, what is the question?