Fahrenheit 451

18 Of The Most Important Quotes From 'Fahrenheit 451'

That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want. 
Kirsten Corley
October 27, 2016
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Bother, Alone
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Books, Burning, Staying
“If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you'll never learn.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: Ignorance, Learning
“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: A Novel
Tagged: insane, crazy
“Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: saving, Save Yourself
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Books, Book Lover
“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, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the backyard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us jokes the way he did. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them the way he did. He was individual. He was an important man. I’ve never gotten over his death. Often I think what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands? He shaped the world. He did things to the world. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: Death, Mourning, Sad
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Listen
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Loaded Gun, Target
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Change, impact
“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: A Novel
Tagged: World, Holding
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Listening, Read
“That's the good part of dying; when you've nothing to lose, you run any risk you want.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: Dying, Good, Risk
“That's the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and WORTH the doing.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: Faith, strength, Worth It
“You're afraid of making mistakes. Don't be.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: Mistakes
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies . . . Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die . . . 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: A Novel
Tagged: Leave, Dying
“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: A Novel
Tagged: Fear, Afraid
“Stand at the top of a cliff and jump off and build your wings on the way down.”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451: A Novel
Tagged: chances, Risk