 The last lines of " Yertle the Turtle " read : " And turtles , of course ... all the turtles are free / As turtles , and maybe , all creatures should be . " When questioned about why he wrote " maybe " rather than " surely " , Seuss replied that he didn 't want to sound " didactic or like a preacher on a platform " , and that he wanted the reader " to say ' surely ' in their minds instead of my having to say it . " 
