F451 quotes Flashcards
“Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”
Beatty
“I’m antisocial, they say. I don’t mix. It’s so strange. I’m very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn’t it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this.”
Clarisse
“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”
Faber
“Any man’s instance who thinks he can fool the government and us.”
Beatty
“Are you happy?”
Clarisse
“At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh?”
Beatty
“Bet I know something else you don’t. There’s dew on the grass in the morning… And if you look… there’s a man in the moon.”
Clarisse
“Christ is one of the ‘family’ now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we’ve dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He’s a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar crystal and saccharine when he isn’t making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshiper absolutely needs.”
Faber
“Clarisse McClellan? We’ve a record on her family. We’ve watched them carefully. Heredity and environment are funny things. You can’t rid yourselves of all the odd ducks in just a few years.”
Beatty
“Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth? But when he was held, rootless, in mid air by Hercules, he perished easily. If there isn’t something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane. Well, there we have the first things I said we needed. Quality, texture of information.”
Faber
“Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores.”
Faber
“I don’t know what it is. I’m so damned unhappy, I’m so mad, and I don’t know why I feel like I’m putting on weight.”
Montag
“I don’t know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren’t happy. Something’s missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I’d seen burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.”
Montag
“I don’t talk things, sir…I talk the meaning of things. I sit her and know I’m alive.”
Faber
“I’m 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”
Faber
“i’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing!”
Beatty
“If you don’t want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him the one. Batter yet, give him none.”
Beatty
“I’m afraid of children my own age. They kill each other… Six of my friends have been shot in the last year alone. Ten of them died in car wrecks. I’m afraid of them and they don’t like me because I’m afraid.”
Clarisse
“I’m seventeen and I’m crazy.”
Clarisse
“I’m the Queen Bee, safe in the hive. You will be the drone, the traveling ear.”
Faber
“It was pretty silly, quoting poetry around free and easy like that. It was the act of a silly damn snob. Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he’s the Lord of all Creation. You think you can walk on water with your books. Well, the world can get by just fine without them.”
Beatty
“It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”
Montag
“I’ve heard rumors; the world in starving, but we’re well-fed. Is it true, the world works hard and we play? Is that why we’re hated so much? I’ve heard the rumors about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why?”
Montag
“Let the war turn off the ‘families.’ Our civilization is flinging itself into pieces. Stand backk from the centrifuge.”
Faber
“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
Montag