John Dos Passos Quote
Was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on ’s Natural Selectionon and with the Burbank potato.Young man go west; went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; could cash in on Natural Selection carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper’s fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin . had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;he wouldn’t give up and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don’t have volcanosany more.
Was born in a brick farmhouse in Lancaster Mass,he walked through the woods one wintercrunching through the shinycrusted snowstumbling into a little dell where a warm spring wasand found the grass green and weeds sproutingand skunk cabbage pushing up a potent thumb,He went home and sat by the stove and read Struggle for Existence Origin of Species NaturalSelection that wasn't what they taught in church,so ceased to believe moved to Lunenburg,found a seedball in a potato plantsowed the seed and cashed in on ’s Natural Selectionon and with the Burbank potato.Young man go west; went to Santa Rosafull of his dream of green grass in winter ever-blooming flowers ever-bearing berries; could cash in on Natural Selection carried his apocalyptic dream of green grass in winterand seedless berries and stoneless plums and thornless roses brambles cactus—winters were bleak in that bleakbrick farmhouse in bleak Massachusetts—out to sunny Santa Rosa;and he was a sunny old manwhere roses bloomed all yeareverblooming everbearinghybrids.America was hybridAmerica could cash in on Natural Selection.He was an infidel he believed in and NaturalSelection and the influence of the mighty deadand a good firm shipper’s fruitsuitable for canning.He was one of the grand old men until the churchesand the congregationsgot wind that he was an infidel and believedin . had never a thought of evil,selected improved hybrids for Americathose sunny years in Santa Rosa.But he brushed down a wasp’s nest that time;he wouldn’t give up and Natural Selectionand they stung him and he diedpuzzled.They buried him under a cedartree.His favorite photographwas of a little totstanding beside a bed of hybrideverblooming double Shasta daisieswith never a thought of evilAnd Mount Shastain the background, used to be a volcanobut they don’t have volcanosany more.
Related Quotes
[:]Atheism by itself is, of course, not a moral position or a political one of any kind; it simply is the refusal to believe in a supernatural dimension. For you to say of Nazism that it was the imple...
Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by several of the officers... for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable authority on some point of morality......
[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned....
I published that theory [of speciational evolution] in a 1954 paper…and I clearly related it to paleontology. argued that the fossil record is very incomplete because some species fossilize better th...
Quite recently the human descent theory has been stigmatized as the 'gorilla theory of human ancestry.' All this despite the fact that Darwin himself, in the days when not a single bit of evidence reg...
Why should I have to hide the fact that I don't believe there’s a supreme being? There’s no proof of it. There’s no harm in saying you’re an atheist. It doesn't mean you treat people any differently....
About John Dos Passos
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visiting Europe and southwest Asia, where he learned about literature, art, and architecture. During World War I, he was an ambulance driver for the American Volunteer Motor Ambulance Corps in Paris and Italy, before joining the United States Army Medical Corps as a private.
In 1920, his first novel, One Man's Initiation: 1917, was published, and in 1925, his novel Manhattan Transfer became a commercial success. His U.S.A. trilogy, which consists of the novels The 42nd Parallel (1930), 1919 (1932), and The Big Money (1936), was ranked by the Modern Library in 1998 as 23rd of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Written in experimental, non-linear form, the trilogy blends elements of biography and news reports to paint a landscape of early 20th-century American culture.
Beyond his writing, Dos Passos is known for his shift in political views. Following his experiences in World War I, he became interested in socialism and pacifism, which also influenced his early work. In 1928, he traveled to the Soviet Union, curious about its social and political experiment, though he left with mixed impressions. His experiences during the Spanish Civil War disillusioned him with left-wing politics while also severing his relationship with fellow writer Ernest Hemingway. By the 1950s, his political views had changed dramatically, and he had become more conservative. In the 1960s, he campaigned for presidential candidates Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.
As an artist, Dos Passos created his own cover art for his books, influenced by the modernism of 1920s Paris. He died in Baltimore, Maryland. Spence's Point, his Virginia estate, was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1971.