John Steinbeck. East of Eden, (1952) pp. 130-131.

When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God.

— John Steinbeck on Mass production

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God." in the context of "John Steinbeck. East of Eden, (1952) pp. 130-131." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Mass production" (Quotes: Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author, S - Z) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
John Steinbeck

About John Steinbeck

John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (27 February 1902 – 20 December 1968) was an American writer. A recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, his works include the novella Of Mice and Men (1937) and the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 1940), both of which examine the lives of the working class and migrant workers during the Great Depression.