Quotes from Gertrude Stein

History takes time. History makes memory.

Before the Flowers of Friendship Faded Friendship Faded.

[Of Oakland, California:] There is no there there.

It is awfully important to know what is and what is not your business.

There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.

The nineteenth century believed in science but the twentieth century does not.

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.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

Poetry consists in a rhyming dictionary and things seen.

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

Money is always there but the pockets change it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money.

It is the soothing thing about history that it does repeat itself.

A real failure does not need an excuse. It is an end in itself.

I am writing for myself and strangers.

Very likely education does not make very much difference.

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.

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

It is natural to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes to that siren until she allures us to our death.

Nothing could bother me more than the way a thing goes dead once it has been said.

Remarks are not literature [said to Hemingway].

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.

I could undertake to be an efficient pupil if it were possible to find an efficient teacher.

But the problem is that when I go around and speak on campuses, I still don't get young men standing up and saying, 'How can I combine career and family?'