J. Frank Dobie Quotes

The boundaries of culture and rainfall never follow survey lines.

The chief contribution made by white men of the Americas to the folk songs of the world ——- the cowboy songs of Texas and the West ——- are rhythmed to the walk, the trot, and the gallop of horses.

Putting on the spectacles of science in expectation of finding an answer to everything looked at signifies inner blindness.

Out of Frederic Remington's Sundown Leflare graved on the mantel. Sundown and another mountain man cooked and ate their supper. "Then," says Remington, "they sat down with the greatest philosopher on earth - the fire."

The most beautiful, the most spirited and the most inspiring creature ever to print foot on the grasses of America.

The average Ph.D. Thesis is nothing but a transference of bones from one graveyard to another.

A man from Iowa or Illinois will say 'I'm from the Middle West'..a Georgian or a Mississipian may admit to being merely a Southerner...but no Texan, given the opportunity, ever said otherwise than 'I'm from Texas'.

The man for whom history is bunk is almost invariably as obtuse to the future as he is blind to the past.

When he stood trembling with fear before the captor, bruised from falls by the restrictive rope, made submissive by choking, clogs, cuts and starvation, he had lost what made him so beautiful and free....One out of every three mustangs captured in south west Texas was expected to die before they were tamed. The process often broke the spirits of the other two.

Texans are the only race of people known to anthropologists who do not depend on breeding for propagation. Like princes and lords, they can be made by breath; plus a big hat-which comparatively few Texans wear.

Luck is being ready for the chance.

I have come to value liberated minds as the supreme good of life on earth.