Fahrenheit 451 is a Ray Bradbury dystopian novel that was originally published in 1953.
The story takes place in a future American society where books are prohibited and “firemen” burn any that are discovered.
Guy Montag, the protagonist, is a firefighter who starts to doubt the government’s activities and ultimately joins a group of rebels who memorize books to preserve their contents.
Here are some great quotes from Fahrenheit 451 book for you.
Table of Contents
Fahrenheit 451 Quotes by Ray Bradbury
“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again…” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you to know with which ear you’ll listen.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Remember, the firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“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.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“That’s the good part of dying; when you’ve nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“I don’t talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“The home environment can undo a lot you try to do at school.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
Other Books Quotes: The Handmaid’s Tale Quotes by Margaret Atwood and Practical Magic Quotes by Alice Hoffman
Best Fahrenheit 451 Quotes by Ray Bradbury
“The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“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?” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Thinking little at all about nothing in particular.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“The average TV commercial of sixty seconds has one hundred and twenty half-second clips in it, or one-third of a second. We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“For if we’re destroyed, the knowledge is dead…We’re nothing more than dust jackets for books…so many pages to a person…” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“It was a pleasure to burn.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Let you alone! That’s 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?” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t 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 heading for shore.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
Quotes from Fahrenheit 451
“Stuff your eyes with wonder. Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s 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 . Shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Maybe the books can get us half out of the cave. They just might stop us from making the same damm insane mistakes!” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“I’ll hold on to the world tight some day. I’ve got one finger on it now; that’s a beginning.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Why is it,” he said, one time, at the subway entrance, “I feel I’ve known you so many years?”
“Because I like you,” she said, “and I don’t want anything from you.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
Famous Fahrenheit 451 Quotes
“There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“To everything there is a season. Yes. A time to break down, and a time to build up. Yes. A time to keep silence and a time to speak. Yes.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Our civilization is flinging itself to pieces. Stand back from the centrifuge.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Putting out the stars and extinguishing the sun.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why…. Luckily, queer ones like her don’t happen often.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
Powerful Fahrenheit 451 Quotes
“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.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“But you can’t make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can’t last.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“How do you get so empty? he wondered. Who takes it out of you?” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“There must be something in books, something we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Those who don’t build must burn.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
“Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me, I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it’ll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.” ~ Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451).
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