John Hersey Quotes

22 quotes in 440 categories

• To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and…
• The second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. Its first symptom was falling hair. Diarrhea and fever, which in some cases…
• There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.
• It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and…
• The writer must not invent. The legend on the license must read: NONE OF THIS WAS MADE UP.
• My two major faults are that I row too long and pick up too many women
• Events are less important than our responses to them.
• At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima,…
• What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much…
• Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.
• The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not…
• Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice;…
• The reality is that changes are coming... They must come. You must share in bringing them.
• Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.
• To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the…
• And, as if nature were protecting man against his own ingenuity, the reproductive processes were affected for a time; men became sterile, women had miscarriages,…
• Many people who did not die right away came down with nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and fever, which lasted several days. Doctors could not be…
• The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation…
• The first stage had been all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was the direct reaction to…
• The third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to compensate for its ills - when, for instance, the white count not…

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