Favorite Quotes from Fahrenheit 451

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Page numbers are from the mass market paperback edition, Random House Publishing.

"If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides of a question to worry him; give him one.  Better yet, give him none.  p. 61

"Peace, Montag.  Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year.  Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information.  p. 61

"The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine percent of them is in a book.  p. 86

"I know a man who printed our college paper half a century ago.  That was the year I came to class at the start of the new semester and found only one student signed up for Drama from Aeschylus to O'Neill.  You see?  How like a beautiful statue of ice it was melting in the sun.  I remember the huge newspapers dying like huge moths... No one wanted them back.  No one even missed them.  p. 89

"For these were the hands that had acted on their own, no part of him, here was where the conscience first manifested itself to snatch books, dart off with Job and Ruth and Willie Shakespeare, and now in the firehouse, these hands seemed gloved in blood.  p. 105

"All right, [the Captain's] had his say. You must take it in. I'll say my say, too, in the next few hours. And you'll take it in. And you'll try to judge them and make your decisions as to which way to jump, or fall... But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority." p. 108

"'What a dreadful surprise,' said Beatty. 'For everyone nowadays knows, absolutely is certain, that nothing will ever happen to me.  Others die, I go on.  There are no consequences and no responsibilities.  Except that there are."  p. 115

"Give a man a few lines of verse and he thinks he's the Lord of all Creation."  p. 118

"So they must have their game out, thought Montag.  The circus must go on, even with war beginning within the hour..."  p. 134

"'I feel alive for the first time in years,' said Faber.  'I feel I'm doing what I should've done a lifetime ago.  For a little while I'm not afraid.  Maybe it's because I'm doing the right thing at last.'"  p. 131