J. Frank Dobie Quotes

When I get ready to explain homemade fascism in America, I can take my example from the state capitol of Texas.

Great literature transcends its native land, but none that I know of ignores its soil.

Luck is being ready for the chance.

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

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

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

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.

No cowboy ever quit while his life was hardest and his duties were most exacting.

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

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.

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.

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’.