Fahrenheit 451 Quotes

Question 1

“Burn all, burn everything. Fire is bright and fire is clean.”

Answer 1

Beatty

Question 2

“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.”

Answer 2

Clarisse

Question 3

“Those who don’t build must burn. It’s as old as history and juvenile delinquents.”

Answer 3

Faber

Question 4

“Any man’s insane who thinks he can fool the government and us.”

Answer 4

Beatty

Question 5

“Are you happy?”

Answer 5

Clarisse

Question 6

“At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh?”

Answer 6

Beatty

Question 7

“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.”

Answer 7

Clarisse

Question 8

“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.”

Answer 8

Faber

Question 9

“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.”

Answer 9

Beatty

Question 10

“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 thing I said we needed. Quality, texture of information.”

Answer 10

Faber

Question 11

“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.”

Answer 11

Faber

Question 12

“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.”

Answer 12

Montag

Question 13

“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 burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.”

Answer 13

Montag

Question 14

“I don’t talk things, sir … I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I’m alive.”

Answer 14

Faber

Question 15

“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”

Answer 15

Faber

Question 16

“I’ve had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing!”

Answer 16

Beatty

Question 17

“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 one. Better yet, give him none.”

Answer 17

Beatty

Question 18

“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.”

Answer 18

Clarisse

Question 19

“I’m seventeen and I’m crazy.”

Answer 19

Clarisse

Question 20

“I’m the Queen Bee, safe in the hive. You will be the drone, the traveling ear.”

Answer 20

Faber

Question 21

“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.”

Answer 21

Beatty

Question 22

“It’s fine work. Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn ‘em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”

Answer 22

Montag

Question 23

“I’ve heard rumours; the world is 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 rumours about hate, too, once in a long while, over the years. Do you know why?”

Answer 23

Montag

Question 24

“Kerosene is nothing but perfume to me.”

Answer 24

Montag

Question 25

“Let the war turn off the ‘families.’ Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.”

Answer 25

Faber

Question 26

“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?”

Answer 26

Montag

Question 27

“Millie, does—Does your ‘family’ love you, love you very much, love you with all their heart and soul, Millie?”

Answer 27

Montag

Question 28

“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn them to ashes, then burn the ashes. That’s our official slogan.”

Answer 28

Montag

Question 29

“Mr. Montag, you are looking at a coward. I saw the way things were going, a long time back. I said nothing.”

Answer 29

Faber

Question 30

“Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me, I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it’ll make sense.”

Answer 30

Montag

Question 31

“Now, my ‘family’ is people. They mean things; I laugh, they laugh!”

Answer 31

Mildred

Question 32

“Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God’s grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.”

Answer 32

The Old Woman

Question 33

“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. You firemen provide a circus now and then at which buildings are set off and crowds gather for the pretty blaze, but it’s a small sideshow indeed …”

Answer 33

Faber

Question 34

“So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless.”

Answer 34

Faber

Question 35

“That’s my family.”

Answer 35

Mildred

Question 36

“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’”

Answer 36

Faber

Question 37

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

Answer 37

Faber

Question 38

“The important thing for you to remember … is we’re the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others.”

Answer 38

Beatty

Question 39

“The most important single thing we had to pound into ourselves is that we were not important….We’re nothing more than dust jackets for books, of no significance otherwise”

Answer 39

Faber

Question 40

“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.”

Answer 40

Montag

Question 41

“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did.”

Answer 41

Granger

Question 42

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

Answer 42

Montag

Question 43

“We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal.”

Answer 43

Beatty

Question 44

“We’re going to build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them.”

Answer 44

Granger

Question 45

“We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in it and cover it up.”

Answer 45

Granger

Question 46

“You can’t ever have my books.”

Answer 46

The Old Woman

Question 47

“You know the law … Where’s your common sense? None of those books agree with each other. You’ve been locked up here for years with a regular damned Tower of Babel.”

Answer 47

Beatty

Question 48

“You’re not like the others … When I talk, you look at me … The others would never do that. The others would walk off and leave me talking. Or threaten me. No one has time any more for anyone else. You’re one of the few who put up with me.”

Answer 48

Clarisse

Question 49

“Now you did it. Old Montag wanted to fly near the sun and now that he’s burnt his damn wings, he wonders why. Didn’t I hint enough when I sent the Hound around your place?”

Answer 49

Beatty

Question 50

“We all made the right kind of mistakes, or we wouldn’t be here. When we were separate individuals, all we had was rage. I struck a fireman when he came to burn my library years ago. I’ve been running ever since.”

Answer 50

Granger

Question 51

“We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”

Answer 51

Granger

Question 52

“We’re book-burners, too. We read the books and burnt them, afraid they’d be found.”

Answer 52

Granger

Question 53

“If you love me at all you’ll put up with this, twenty-four, forty-eight hours, that’s all I ask, then it’ll be over. I promise, I swear! And if there is something here, just one little thing out of a whole mess of things, maybe we can pass it on to someone else.”

Answer 53

Montag

Question 54

“Professor Faber, I have a rather odd question to ask. How many copies of the Bible are left in this country?”

Answer 54

Montag

Question 55

“Who can stop me? I’m a fireman. I can burn you!”

Answer 55

Montag

Question 56

“Go home … Go home and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home and think of that and your damn Caesarian sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home and think how it all happened and what did you ever do to stop it? Go home, go home! Before I knock you down and kick you out of the door!”

Answer 56

Montag

Question 57

“It’ll be even more fun when we can afford to have the fourth wall installed. How long you figure before we save up and get the fourth wall torn out and a fourth wall-TV put in? It’s only two thousand dollars.”

Answer 57

Mildred

Question 58

“McClellan. McClellan, Run over by a car. Four days ago. I’m not sure. But I think she’s dead. The family moved out anyway. I don’t know. But I think she’s dead.”

Answer 58

Mildred

Question 59

“See what you’re doing? You’ll ruin us! Who’s more important, me or that Bible?”

Answer 59

Mildred

Question 60

“Poor family, poor family, oh everything gone, everything, everything gone now ….”

Answer 60

Mildred

Question 61

“Go to the firehouse when it’s time. I’ll be with you. Let’s listen to this Captain Beatty together. He could be one of us. God knows. I’ll give you things to say. We’ll give him a good show. Do you hate me for this electronic cowardice of mine?”

Answer 61

Faber

Question 62

“Would you like me to read? I’ll read so you can remember. I go to bed only five hours a night. Nothing to do. So if you like; I’ll read you to sleep nights. They say you retain knowledge even when you’re sleeping, if someone whispers it in your ear.”

Answer 62

Faber

Question 63

“I’ve heard there are still hobo camps all across the country, here and there; walking camps … they say there’s lots of old Harvard degrees on the tracks between here and Los Angeles. Most of them are wanted and hunted in the cities.”

Answer 63

Faber