Arthur Miller — Profile, Rankings & Fame Trend

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He wrote the play about the salesman who cracked under the weight of the American Dream, then stood before McCarthy's committee and refused to name names—and somewhere in between married the most famous woman in the world.

Biography

About

Arthur Asher Miller was born October 17, 1915, and became one of the defining voices of 20th-century American theater. All My Sons arrived in 1947, but it was Death of a Salesman two years later—now considered among the best American plays of the century—that secured him a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a permanent place in the canon. The Crucible followed in 1953, then A View from the Bridge in 1955. Through the late 1940s and 1950s he was rarely out of the public eye: he testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the Red Scare, married Marilyn Monroe, and wrote the scre…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

said7 Feb 1964

It is always and forever the same struggle: to perceive somehow our own complicity with evil is a horror not to be borne.

— "With respect for Her Agony — but with Love" in LIFE magazine (February 7, 1964)

Arthur Miller

said1 Feb 1964

The apple cannot be stuck back on the Tree of Knowledge; once we begin to see, we are doomed and challenged to seek the strength to see more, not less.

— Commenting on After the Fall (1964) in The Saturday Evening Post (February 1, 1964)

Arthur Miller

said20 Jan 1964

The best of our theater is standing on tiptoe, striving to see over the shoulders of father and mother.

— National Observer (January 20, 1964)

Arthur Miller

said20 Jan 1964

The job is to ask questions — it always was — and to ask them as inexorably as I can. And to face the absence of precise answers with a certain humility.

— National Observer (January 20, 1964)

Arthur Miller

said26 Nov 1961