John Griffith London (January 12, 1876 – November 22, 1916) was an American novelist, journalist, and social activist. A pioneer of commercial fiction and American magazines, he was one of the first American authors to become an international celebrity and earn a large fortune from writing. Hope, our collection of Jack London Quotes will ignite the light of wisdom within you.
Affluence means influence.
– Jack London
Jack London Quotes
1. “Intelligent men are cruel. Stupid men are monstrously cruel.” – Jack London
2. “A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.” – Jack London
3. “One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.” – Jack London
4. “The only way to know life is by not ignoring life.” – Jack London
5. “Success is just this — retaining the substance and transmuting the potential into the kinetic.” – Jack London
6. “A man without courage is to me the most despicable thing under the sun, a travesty on the whole scheme of creation.” – Jack London
7. “Life, in a sense, is living and surviving. And all that makes for living and surviving is good.” – Jack London
8. “There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.” – Jack London
9. “Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.” – Jack London
10. “As one grows weaker one is less susceptible to suffering. There is less hurt because there is less to hurt.” – Jack London
11. “For the mediocre there is no hope. Mediocrity is a sin.” – Jack London
12. “Truth is no respecter of age, nor of youth . . . Remember, anything less that the utter truth is a lie and a cheat by you to yourself.” – Jack London
13. “Limited minds can recognize limitations only in others.” – Jack London
14. “Age is never so old as youth would measure it.” – Jack London
15. “Desire is a pain which seeks easement through possession.” – Jack London
16. “Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.” – Jack London
17. “The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.” – Jack London
18. “The world is covered with the dust of self-called and alleged sane men who left no mark upon the face of life and are utterly forgotten. Please, please remember that the big things lie in passion and in passionate expression.” – Jack London
19. “To be well fitted for the tragedy of existence . . . one must have a working philosophy, a synthesis of things.” – Jack London
20. “Hell is full of sweet, spineless souls who devoted themselves to sweetness and light. . . . doers are unaffected by sweetness and light and all the rest of the complacent soft culture of the non-doers who do not even smell when they are dead.” – Jack London
21. “In a saturated population life is always cheap.” – Jack London
22. “There are things greater than our wisdom, beyond our justice. The right and wrong of this we cannot say, and it is not for us to judge.” – Jack London
23. “Show me a man with a tattoo and I’ll show you a man with an interesting past.” – Jack London
24. “Growth is life, and life is for ever destined to make for light.” – Jack London
25. “The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.” – Jack London
26. “I do not live for what the world thinks of me, but for what I think of myself.” – Jack London
27. “Man rarely places a proper valuation upon his womankind, at least not until deprived of them.” – Jack London
28. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London
29. “Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour.” – Jack London
30. “Pursuit and possession are accompanied by states of consciousness so wide apart that they can never be united.” – Jack London
31. “To be able to forget means sanity.” – Jack London
32. “It’s better to stand by someone’s side than by yourself.” – Jack London
33. “Mercy did not exist in the primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such misunderstandings made for death.” – Jack London
34. “Some sorts of truth are truer than others.” – Jack London
35. “Any man who was a man could travel alone.” – Jack London
36. “I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.” – Jack London
37. “The Law is a lie, and through it men lie most shamelessly.” – Jack London
38. “A good joke will sell quicker than a good poem, and, measured in sweat and blood, will bring better remuneration.” – Jack London
39. “If cash comes with fame, come fame; if cash comes without fame, come cash.” – Jack London
40. “There’s only one way to make a beginning, and that is to begin; and begin with hard work, and patience, prepared for all the disappointments” – Jack London
