Quotes from Upton Sinclair

That is what art is, a process of creation, which makes itself a part of life, and builds new life in its own image, immortal and eternally operating within the soul of man. One accent of the Holy Ghost the heedless world hath never lost!

He smiled gently, being sorry for her. "Mother dear, I am one of those unlucky people who have to stand in the middle and get the brickbats from both sides. I see the good in both and I see the evil. But if you point that out the fanatics on both sides want to kill you.

Armies marching and fighting all over Europe, all through the centuries—and Lanny could not recall ever having met a single peasant or workingman who liked war or expected to gain from it. War was a sport of ruling classes!

The father kept two compartments in his mind, one for things that were right, and the other for things that existed, and which you had to allow to exist, and to defend, in a queer, half-hearted, but stubborn way. But here was this new phenomenon, a boy's mind which was all one compartment; things ought to be right, and if they were not right, you ought to make them right, or else what was the use of having any right—you were only fooling yourself about it.

The Rightists called themselves America Firsters, and their opponents called them Fascists; the Leftists called themselves Liberals, and their opponents called them Reds.

Lanny danced with light feet but a heavy heart; having created patterns in times of joy, he could reproduce them in times of sorrow.

The very freedom we are so proud of is their assurance of success; we are made impotent by it, and cannot imagine taking action against those who use their freedom to destroy ours.

Wasn't it true, asked the violinist, that a revolution sometimes degenerated and fell into the hands of men who used its slogans as covers for their love of personal power? And when you had a one-party system and suppressed all criticism, how could any evil be corrected?

On vaikeaa saada ihminen ymmärtämään jotain, kun hänen palkkana riippuu siitä, ettei hän ymmärrä.

The larger magnates and their wives had decided ideas. For them the Hitler invention meant no more strikes or labor-union agitation, no more Reds fighting in the streets; it meant wages fixed and permanent, resulting in such prosperity as heavy industry had never before known. In short, the Third Reich was the magnate's dream, and Lanny was struck by the curious resemblance of their conversation to that of his father.

Where savage beasts in forest midnight roam, Seeking in sorrow for each other's joy. Even while he was helping to win a war, Lanny hated that war and all others; he hated the lies he had to tell fully as much as those he had to hear. He was a man with a divided mind, and this put him at a disadvantage with men like these Nazis, who were never troubled with doubts and had consigned all scruples to the dustbin of history.

The excessively rich were as shy as wild birds; everybody was hunting them and they took wing at the least hint of danger. They were abnormally sensitive and had to be handled as if they were made of wet tissue paper. They would absorb flattery like sponges—but only that subtle kind which assured them that they were above flattery.

It is obvious that when a nation turns its whole substance into war materials, as Germany is doing now, the time will come when that nation has to go to war—it can do nothing else because it is equipped for nothing else; and it must use its armaments or else be suffocated under their weight.

The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label.

love. It was good to do with it, but also good to be able to do without

The more things had cost the better they were and the more they were talked about, which was the best of all. "Three million dollars!" people would say about the palace, and their voices would be lowered as if they were speaking of the dwelling place of deity.

A family was supposed to be living there, but probably, like most rich people, they were away from home most of the time. Lanny had observed that the more money people had, the harder they found it to escape boredom.

onetime circus barker who had become senator from North Carolina and was one of the most ardent propagandists of that brand of hundred-per cent Americanism which could hardly be distinguished from Nazi-Fascism.

He understood that it is the fate of dictators to have to listen to flattery and to grow more susceptible to it. There are few who dare to say No in their presence, and it becomes less and less tolerable to them to hear that presumptuous word.

Everybody knew who had murdered Castillo—except those heads of the government who believed in democracy and peace, in civil liberties and freedom of speech, so ardently that they couldn't make any move against the sworn enemies of these blessings.

That blizzard knocked many a man out, for the crowd outside begging for work was never greater, and the packers would not wait long for any one. When it was over, the soul of Jurgis was a song, for he had met the enemy and conquered, and felt himself the master of his fate.—So it might be with some monarch of the forest that has vanquished his foes in fair fight, and then falls into some cowardly trap in the night-time.

These refugees from a score of lands, including the sweet land of liberty overseas, talked politics and war incessantly, but when you listened you discovered that what they were thinking about was their own comfort, the preservation of the system which made their own lives so easy. What was going to happen to the "market"?—by which they meant the stocks and bonds from which their incomes were derived. If

They were shaken to the depths of them, with the awe of love realized; and was it so very weak of them that they cried for a little peace? They had opened their hearts, like flowers to the springtime, and the merciless winter had fallen upon them?

which seemed to Lanny the great tragedy of the workers' movement; he thought they had enemies enough among the capitalist class, without dividing among themselves. Yet he was forced to realize that if you believed revolutionary violence to be necessary, you were apt to be violent in advocating it; while if you believed in peaceable methods—well, apparently the men of violence would force you to be violent against them!