Fahrenheit 451

Youre not like the others. Ive seen a few; I know. When I talk, you look at me. When I said something about the moon, you looked at the moon, last night. 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. Youre one of the few who put up with me. Thats why I think its so strange youre a fireman. It just doesnt seem right for you, somehow.23-24

— Fahrenheit 451 time

I sometimes think drivers don’t know what grass is, or flowers, because they never see them slowly. If you showed a driver a green blur, Oh yes! he’d say, that’s grass! A pink blur! That’s a rose garden! White blurs are houses. Brown blurs are cows. My uncle drove slowly on a highway once. He drove forty miles per hour and they jailed him for two days. Isn’t that funny, and sad, too? 9

— Fahrenheit 451 funny

Thats sad, said Montag, quietly,referring to The Hound because all we put into it is hunting and finding and killing. What a shame if thats all it can ever know.

— Fahrenheit 451 sad

How inconvenient! Always before it had been like snuffing a candle. The police went first and adhesive-taped the victims mouth and bandaged him off into their glittering beetle cars, so when you arrived you found an empty house. You werent hurting anyone, you were hurting only things! And since things really couldnt be hurt, since things felt nothing, and things dont scream or whimper, as this woman might begin to scream and cry out, there was nothing to tease your conscience later. You were simply cleaning up. Janitorial work, essentially. Everything to its proper place. Quick with the kerosene! Whos got a match? 36

— Fahrenheit 451 science

So it was the hand that started it all. He felt one hand and then the other work his coat free and let it slump to the floor. He held his pants out into an abyss and let them fall into darkness. His hands had been infected, and soon it would be his arms. He could feel the poison working up his wrists and into his elbows and his shoulders and then jump over from shoulder blade to shoulder blade like a spark leaping a gap. His hands were ravenous. And his eyes were beginning to feel hunger as if they must look at something, anything, everything.

— Fahrenheit 451 art

Shes nothing to me; she shouldnt have had books. It was her responsibility, she should have thought of that. I hate her. Shes got you going and next thing you know well be out, no house, no job, nothing.

— Fahrenheit 451 books

Let you alone! Thats 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?52

— Fahrenheit 451 self

Bigger the population, the more minorities. Dont step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did.54

— Fahrenheit 451 love

Many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumor of a title to you, Mrs. Montag whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: Now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbors. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; theres your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.

— Fahrenheit 451 knowledge

School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?

— Fahrenheit 451 life

With school turning out more runners, jumpers, racers, tinkerers, grabbers, snatchers, fliers, and swimmers instead of examiners, critics, knowers, and imaginative creators, the word `intellectual, of course, became the swear word it deserved to be. You always dread the unfamiliar. page 58

— Fahrenheit 451 age

We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against.

— Fahrenheit 451 man

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon. Breach mans mind. Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? Me? I wont stomach them for a minute. 56

— Fahrenheit 451 mind

People want to be happy, isnt that right? Havent you heard it all your life? I want to be happy, people say. Well, arent they? Dont we keep them moving, dont we give them fun? Thats all we live for, isnt it? For pleasure, for titillation? And you must admit our culture provides plenty of these. 59

— Fahrenheit 451 life

Colored people dont like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people dont feel good about Uncle Toms Cabin. Burn it. 59

— Fahrenheit 451 people

She didnt want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask Why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girls better off dead. 60

— Fahrenheit 451 sin

You cant build a house without nails and wood. If you dont want a house built, hide the nails and wood. If you dont want a man unhappy politically, dont give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. 61

— Fahrenheit 451 war

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 non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of facts they feel stuffed, but absolutely brilliant with information. Then theyll feel theyre thinking, theyll get a sense of motion without moving. And theyll be happy, because facts of that sort dont change. Dont give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. Any man who can take a TV wall apart and put it back together again, and most men can nowadays, is happier than any man who tries to slide rule, measure, and equate the universe, which just wont be measured or equated without making man feel bestial and lonely. I know, Ive tried it; to hell with it.61

— Fahrenheit 451 philosophy

I hope Ive clarified things. The important thing for you to remember, Montag, is were the Happiness Boys, the Dixie Duo, you and I and the others. We stand against the small tide of those who want to make everyone unhappy with conflicting theory and thought. We have our fingers in the dike. Hold steady. Dont let the torrent of melancholy and drear philosophy drown our world. We depend on you. I dont think you realize how important you are, to our happy world as it stands now.61-62

— Fahrenheit 451 philosophy

At least once in his career, every fireman gets an itch. What do the books say, he wonders. Oh, to scratch that itch, eh? Well, Montag, take my word for it, Ive had to read a few in my time, to know what I was about, and the books say nothing! Nothing you can teach or believe. Theyre about nonexistent people, figments of imagination, if theyre fiction. And if theyre non-fiction, its worse, one professor calling another an idiot, one philosopher screaming down anothers gullet. All of them running about, putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun. You come away lost.

— Fahrenheit 451 books

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.

— Fahrenheit 451

That woman, the other night, Millie, you werent there. You didnt see her face. And Clarisse. You never talked to her. I talked to her. And men like Beatty are afraid of her. I cant understand it. Why should they be so afraid of someone like her? But I kept putting her alongside the firemen in the house last night, and I suddenly realized I didnt like them at all, and I didnt like myself at all any more.67

— Fahrenheit 451 men

Montag picked a single small volume from the floor. Where do we begin? He opened the book halfway and peered at it. We begin by beginning, I guess. 68

— Fahrenheit 451 book

It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break eggs at the smaller end. --Jonathan Swift, Gullivers Travels

— Fahrenheit 451 death

We have everything we need to be happy, but we arent happy. Somethings missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books Id burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help.78

— Fahrenheit 451 books

The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, its not books at all youre looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldnt know this, of course you still cant understand what I mean when I say all this.82

— Fahrenheit 451 books

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.83

— Fahrenheit 451 life

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 isnt something in that legend for us today, in this city, in our time, then I am completely insane.83

— Fahrenheit 451 time

After all, when we had all the books we needed, we still insisted on finding the highest cliff to jump off. But we do need knowledge. And perhaps in a thousand years we might pick smaller cliffs to jump off. 86

— Fahrenheit 451 knowledge

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. Theyre Caesars praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal. Most of us cant rush around, talk to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we havent time, money or that many friends. The things youre looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book. Dont ask for guarantees. And dont look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were headed for shore.86

— Fahrenheit 451 books

Remember the firemen are rarely necessary. The public 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 its a small sideshow indeed, and hardly necessary to keep things in line. So few want to be rebels anymore. And out of those few, most, like myself, scare easily. Can you dance faster than the White Clown, shout louder than Mr. Gimmick and the parlor families? If you can, youll win your way, Montag. In any event, you’re a fool. People are having fun.87Faber to Montag

— Fahrenheit 451 reading

Out of two separate and opposite things, a third. And one day he would look back upon the fool and know the fool.

— Fahrenheit 451 day

If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, Id say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustnt go back to being just a fireman. All isnt well with the world.

— Fahrenheit 451 war

Youre afraid of making mistakes. Dont be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in peoples faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and youll never learn.

— Fahrenheit 451 time

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?

— Fahrenheit 451 children

It didnt come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

— Fahrenheit 451 god

All right, hes had his say. You must take it in. Ill say my say, too, in the next few hours. And youll take it in. And youll try to judge them and make your decision as to which way to jump, or fall. But I want it to be your decision, not mine, and not the Captains. But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority. Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.

— Fahrenheit 451 truth

I paid for all this — how? Playing the stock-market, of course, the last refuge in the world for the dangerous intellectual out of a job.90

— Fahrenheit 451 world

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 hes 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. Look where they got you, in slime up to your lip. If I stir the slime with my little finger, youll drown! 117-118

— Fahrenheit 451 poetry

They would have killed me, thought Montag, swaying, the air still torn and stirring about him in dust, touching his bruised cheek. For no reason at all in the world they would have killed me.122

— Fahrenheit 451 world

Would he have time for a speech? As the Hound seized him, in view of ten or twenty or thirty million people, mightnt he sum up his entire life in the last week in one single phrase or a word that would stay with them long after the Hound had turned, clenching him in its metal-plier jaws, and trotted off in darkness, while the camera remained stationary, watching the creature dwindle in the distance— a splendid fade-out! What could he say in a single word, a few words, that would sear all their faces and wake them up?128:Are you happy?

— Fahrenheit 451 life

With an effort, Montag reminded himself again that this was no fictional episode to be watched on his run to the river; it was in actuality his own chess-game he was witnessing, move by move.

— Fahrenheit 451 fiction

Police suggest entire population in the Elm Terrace area do as follows: Everyone in every house in every street open a front or rear door or look from the windows. The fugitive cannot escape if everyone in the next minute looks from his house. Ready!Of course! Why hadnt they done it before! Why, in all the years, hadnt this game been tried! Everyone up, everyone out! He couldnt be missed! The only man running alone in the night city, the only man proving his legs!

— Fahrenheit 451 man

The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. The world rushed in a circle and turned on its axis and time was busy burning the years and the people anyway, without any help from him. So if he burnt things with the firemen, and the sun burnt Time, that meant everything burnt! 134

— Fahrenheit 451 time

Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in peoples heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silver-fish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches. 134

— Fahrenheit 451 books

He walked on the track. And he was surprised to learn how certain he suddenly was of a single fact he could not prove. Once, long ago, Clarisse had walked here, where he was walking now. 145

— Fahrenheit 451 sin

Theyre faking. You threw them off at the river. They cant admit it. They know they can hold their audience only so long. The shows got to have a snap ending, quick! If they started searching the whole damn river it might take all night. So theyre sniffing for a scape-goat to end things with a bang. Watch. Theyll catch Montag in the next five minutes! 148

— Fahrenheit 451 art

Right now, some poor fellow is out for a walk. A rarity. An odd one. Dont think the police dont know the habits of queer ducks like that, men who walk mornings for the hell of it, or for reasons of insomnia. Anyway, the police have had him charted for months, years. Never know when that sort of information might be handy. And today, it turns out, its very usable indeed. It saves face. 148

— Fahrenheit 451 art

Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. 151

— Fahrenheit 451 book

I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gullivers Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

— Fahrenheit 451 love

Right now we have a horrible job; were waiting for the war to begin and, as quickly, end. Its not pleasant, but then were not in control, were the odd minority crying in the wilderness. When the wars over, perhaps we can be of some use in the world. Well pass the books on to our children, by word of mouth, and let our children wait, in turn, on the other people. A lot will be lost that way, of course. But you cant make people listen.

— Fahrenheit 451 books

I hate a Roman named Status Quo! he said to me. Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if youd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. Its more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that, he said, shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass. 157-158

— Fahrenheit 451 life

Montag, falling flat, going down, saw or felt, or imagined he saw or felt the walls go dark in Millies face, heard her screaming, because in the millionth part of time left, she saw her own face reflected there, in a mirror instead of a crystal ball, and it was such a wildly empty face, all by itself in the room, touching nothing, starved and eating of itself, that at last she recognized it as her own and looked quickly up at the ceiling as it and the entire structure of the hotel blasted down upon her, carrying her with a million pounds of brick, metal, plaster, and wood, to meet other people in the hives below, all on their quick way down to the cellar where the explosion rid itself of them in its own unreasonable way.

— Fahrenheit 451 time

I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while itll all gather together inside and itll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where its finally me, where its in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I get hold of it so itll never run off. Ill hold on to the world tight some day. Ive got one finger on it now; thats a beginning.

— Fahrenheit 451 god

There was a silly damn bird called a Phoenix back before Christ: every few hundred years he built a pyre and burned himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like were doing the same thing, over and over, but weve got one damn thing the Phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things weve done for a thousand years, and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, some day well stop making the goddam funeral pyres and jumping into the middle of them. We pick up a few more people that remember, every generation.

— Fahrenheit 451 god

Some day the load were carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didnt use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. Were 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 were doing, you can say, Were remembering. Thats where well win out in the long run. And some day well remember so much that well build the biggest goddamn steamshovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, were going to go build a mirror factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them. 163-164

— Fahrenheit 451 god

To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silent and a time to speak. Yes, all that. But what else? What else? Something, something . . . And on either side of the river was there a tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month; And the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

— Fahrenheit 451 life

Fahrenheit 451 quotes analyzed; study guide with themes, character analyses, multimedia, teacher resources

— Fahrenheit 451 quotes

If they give you ruled paper, write the other way. Quotation of Juan Ramón Jiménez, used as an epigraph on the first page.

— Fahrenheit 451 age

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