Louis L'Amour Quotes

Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen.

I've a regard for law, although I do not always agree with it. Without law, man becomes a beast.

To exist is to adapt and if one could not adapt one died and made room for those who could.

Anger is a killing thing: it kills the man who angers for each rage leaves him less than he had bee...

There is no miraculous change that takes place in a boy that makes him a man. He becomes a man by be...

You can't fight the desert... you have to ride with it.

If you’re going to be a writer, the first essential is just to write. Do not wait for an idea. Start...

So many things that are so dramatic or exciting when you read about them actually happen so simply a...

The wealthy and satisfied do not migrate, they stagnate.

Many a small man is considered good while he remains small, but let power come to him, and he become...

There are many ways of fighting. Many a man or woman has waged a good war for truth, honor, and free...

It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the...

Evil comes often to a man with money; tyranny comes surely to him without it. I say this, who am Mat...

Never can tell when you might come on somebody needs skinning.

Now, tomorrow Miss Laurie McCrae and me, we have an appointment with a sky pilot who will make it pr...

I'm sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from h...

If you want the law to leave you alone, keep your hair trimmed and your boots shined.

When a man is one of a kind, he will be lonely wherever he is.

People only talk about how wonderful youth is when they have forgotten how hard it was.

To live in a city, one must be larger than one's environment or enjoy belonging to the crowd.

I do not think much of ages. People are people. What does it matter how old or young they are? It is...

It is easy to destroy a book, but an idea once implanted has roots no man can utterly destroy.

The terms we use for what is considered supernatural are woefully inadequate. Beyond such terms as g...

People have a greater tolerance for evil than for violence. If crooked gamboling, thieving and robin...

Folks who talk about no violence are always the ones who are first to call a policeman and usually t...

violence is an evil thing, but when the guns are all in the hands of the men without respect for hum...

The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where ...

I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifet...

...the way I figure, no man has the right to be ignorant. In a country like this, ignorance is a cri...

Folks who have lived the cornered sort of life most scholars, teachers, and storekeepers live seldom...

...he'd had the foresight to know that a lot of the savages wear store-bought clothes.

She'd never been one to think in terms of years, anyway. A person was what they were, and many a man...

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

I've noticed...that whenever a man is asked to be realistic he is being asked to betray something in...

The Apache don't have a word for love," he said. "Know what they both say at the marriage? The squaw...

I like my fellow man, but I also realize he carried a good measure of the Old Nick in him and he can...

Personally, I do not believe the human mind has any limits but those we impose ourselves.

If one really wants to learn, one has to decide what is important. Spending an evening on the town? ...

Browsing through the shelves in bookstores or libraries, I was completely happy.

Books are precious things, but more than that, they are the strong backbone of civilization. They ar...

A journey is time suspended.

Education is everywhere, prompting one to think, to consider, to remember.

Only one who has learned much can fully appreciate his ignorance.

The key to understanding any people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.

Knowledge is like money: To be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in qua...

Much of the study of history is a matter of comparison, of relating what was happening in one area t...

Historical novels are, without question, the best way of teaching history, for they offer the human ...

Indeed, I find that distance lends perspective and I often write better of a place when I am some di...

Without books we should very likely be a still-primitive people living in the shadow of traditions t...

Someone has said that culture is what remains with you after you have forgotten all you have read, a...

Our world is made up of a myriad of microcosms, of tiny worlds, each with its own habitues, every on...

Folks can’t seem to realize that it isn’t a smooth talker we need in there but a steady man, a man w...

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.

...if we are to become a land of homes and people, evil men must not be allowed to persist in their ...

Actually, all education is self-education. A teacher is only a guide, to point out the way, and no s...

To disbelieve is easy to scoff is simple to have faith is harder.

I fear there will be no future for those who do not change.

The idea of education has been so tied to schools, universities, and professors that many assume the...

No one can get an education, for of necessity education is a continuing process.

For you and me today is all we have tomorrow is a mirage that may never become reality.

The wind was cold off the mountains and I was a naked man with enemies behind me and nothing before...

Being scared can keep a man from getting killed and often makes a better fighter of him.

It means little to anybody but us. We set store by kinfolk. We've our troubles from time to time, bu...

Kill him? Would that be it? No man knew better than he the tricks that Destiny plays on a man, or ho...

The one law that does not change is that everything changes and the hardship I was bearing today wa...

A man who says he has never been scared is either lying or else he's never been any place or done an...

He never knew when he was whipped ... so he never was.

I really learned how to write from Robert Louis Stevenson, Anthony Trollope, and de Maupassant.

Pa he always said a man had to look spry for himself because nobody would do it for him your oppo...

No man is a complete ruler or dictator. He is only the mouthpiece for the wishes of his followers. A...

This-this was what made life: a moment of quiet the water falling in the fountain the girl's voice...

Few of us ever live in the present we are forever anticipating what is to come or remembering what ...

A writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to pu...

It has seemed to me that each year one should pause to take stock of himself, to ask: Where am I goi...

Men strive for peace but it is their enemies that give them strength and I think if man no longer ...

You would be wise" he agreed, "To go to Cordoba or Toledo. The best of all things is to learn. Money...

A good beginning makes a good end.

No memory is ever alone; it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their...

Any man can shoot a gun and with practice he can draw fast and shoot accurately but that makes no ...

A mountain man tries to live with the country instead of against it.

My future is one I must make myself.

There was a Texas Ranger one time who said that there's no stopping a man who knows he's in the righ...

One learns to adapt to the land in which one lives.

For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived, for fiction, biograph...

Up to a point a man's life is shaped by environment heredity and movements and changes in the worl...

A body shouldn't heed what might be. He's got to do with what is.

It is brutal. Only I never could see the sense in having folks look at your tombstone and say, 'He w...

It had been my father's way to remove obstructions, to repair washouts in old trails, to leave each ...

He might never really do what he said but at least he had it in mind. He had somewhere to go.

Man needs so little ... yet he begins wanting so much.

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not ...

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in qua...

She had believed the land was her enemy and she struggled against it but you could not make war ag...

I would not sit waiting for some value tomorrow nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifet...

A great book begins with an idea; a great life, with a determination.

A wise man fights to win but he is twice a fool who has no plan for possible defeat.

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Enemies can be an incentive to survive and become someone in spite of them. Enemies can keep you ale...

Hate would destroy him who hated.

One thing we learned. To make a start and keep plugging. When I had fights at school the little whi...