Quotes from Upton Sinclair

This Senator of the hillbillies was one of the most active and determined advocates of Fascism in the Western World; but Lanny reflected that quite possibly he didn't know it was Fascism and would have been indignant at the term. What he called it was Americanism, or plain hundred-per-cent patriotism.

Great moments do not last in a confused and helter-skelter world. The idealist dreams how things ought to go, but they don't—there being no perfect human creatures or groups of them.

The ascetics give it a bad name," he said, "but the fact is that it is one of the most delicate and gracious of the arts, and its delights penetrate every fiber of the being and become the basis of sympathy and understanding, companionship and co-operation, loyalty and devotion. Love is like the fire under the boilers, which gives power to all the machinery. Without it, life is a film in black and white; with it, the picture glows with all the colors of the rainbow.

The Italians were tireless in giving assurances to their friends; and every evening you could hear the voice of the American poet, Ezra Pound, speaking in English from a station on the Italian Riviera, ridiculing the idea that the ignorant rabble was fitted to govern any country, and hailing Fascism and its "corporate state" as the form of the future society.

The best that anyone could do for the present was to build him a not too costly home in some part of the earth where there was no gold, oil, coal, or other mineral treasure, and which was not near a disputed boundary or strategic configuration of land or water. There with reasonable luck he might have peace within his own walls, and perhaps think some thoughts which might be helpful to a hate-tormented world.

The great indoctrinated masses loved and honored him as a projection, a perfect archetype, of themselves. Amid all the suffering and grief they believed what he told them, that they were the greatest people on earth, and had only to hold out and victory would come to their banner. Sieg heil!

Farewell my dearest flower; Farewell my happiness as well, as for me, the unfortunate, I see I am destined by the highest To live alone in this world, in misery

men who understood the workers and how to fool them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders.

You understand how it is worked—they send their bullies into the country to provoke disturbances, and when the police put them down, that's an atrocity.

Various persons had decided to burn churches and church buildings in Spain, as a means of putting an end to the use of religion in support of political reaction and industrial slavery. Lanny was sorry, because to him these old churches were sanctuaries of art and of such culture as had existed in their day.

The Army didn't know who its true friends were; it considered Socialists to be crackpots, just as they were called in America, and the people who knew how to get things done were the powerful ones at the top—the same who had hired the Nazi-Fascist gangsters to put down labor and keep political control in the hands of the well-born and well-to-do. F.D.R. himself understood this quite clearly; but how many in his administration understood it, and how many in Congress

that he sold out his convictions mattered less, for the people had become so cynical about public men that they hoped only to find the least dishonest.

Good God!" exclaimed Raoul. "How much more will the people need to wake them up?

was lack of that living spirit of brotherhood and solidarity which had made it possible for Otto Braun, Social-Democratic Premier of the Prussian state, and Karl Severing, Minister of the Interior, to bow to the threats of monocled aristocrats, and slink off to their villas without making the least effort to rouse the people to defend their republic and the liberties it guaranteed them.

You could never be sure how much of it was acting, for he was sly as the devil, and not above using his arts on those he loved.

Tell him anything that I have said to you. That is the advantage of my position; I tell them the whole truth, and it is as if I had said nothing, for they do not believe me.

Huey Long, unfortunately, had been shot; a shrewd devil, he had said: "It will be easy to bring Fascism in America. Just call it Anti-Fascism.

But the more unsaintly the world became, the more it had need of new saints, by whatever name they were called—persons who believed in justice and freedom more than they believed in personal comfort and the good opinion of the personally comfortable.

in the next dark place a camel harnessed to a pole went round and round, working a press which squeezed olive oil from loads of the fruit; the camel had a hood over his face, so that he wouldn't see what he was doing, and might dream that he was out on the desert trails where he had been born.

Old Antanas had been a worker ever since he was a child; he had run away from home when he was twelve, because his father beat him for trying to learn to read.

When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don't I?" It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.

That was the irony of the free enterprise system, so ardently praised by the enterprisers; the system could keep the people in comfort so long as the energies of the community were being devoted to killing other people; but the moment they settled down to enjoy the peace their valor had won, they found themselves heading into another depression, with breadlines and apple-selling on the streets and boondoggling and leaf-raking on the country roads.

The politicians and generals and kings lived in the limelight and enjoyed the glory, while the men of money stayed in the background and gave the orders, politely when possible, but making sure they would be obeyed.

The government were going to do everything possible to avoid offending a touchy Reichskanzler, even to the extent of censoring British opinion on the subject of "Munich." American newsreels which ventured criticism were barred, and a strict rule against censure of Chamberlain was being enforced by the British radio.