Quotes from Upton Sinclair

What are we, really; and how do we come to be, and for what purpose are we placed here, and what becomes of us when we depart? Above all, what is the origin of that strange faculty in us which we call conscience? Why do we have a sense of duty, and what is the basis of its validity, and of our assurance concerning it? If we are as the beasts of the field that perish, why do we owe any obligation to the world, or to our fellow men, or to ourselves?

no use to say it, for people didn't want to believe it and they knew how to believe what they chose.

The future of Europe rests between the Communists and the Socialists, and if you try to stop Socialism you will drive the workers straight into the Communist camp. Socialization of basic industry and free co-operatives in small manufacturing and retail trade—that is the only program that has any chance of winning Western Europe and keeping it.

She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence.

It means that greed and jealousy continue to rule the world, and people spend their substance building fences to keep the rest of the world out.

It was the "leisure-class" world, and the people in it were proud of the fact that they had never done and didn't know how to do anything useful. The farther back they could trace an ancestry which had never done it, the more distinguished they were.

All that a teacher had to do was to let these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its control of education describes as "dangerous thoughts.

Such was the gospel of "Reverend Smith," as his followers called him. It was the whole Nazi creed of hate, complete to the smallest detail, but translated from German into Middle Western with a touch of the South. It was preaching in the style of the old-time camp-meeting, where people were used to shouting "Amen!

Mark Twain, I believe, is author of the saying that a lie can run all the way round the earth while the truth is putting on its

Cannes was thought of as a playground for the rich; a city of lovely villas and gardens, a paradise of fashionable elegance. Few stopped to realize what a mass of labor was required to maintain that cleanliness and charm: not merely the servants who dwelt on the estates, but porters and truckdrivers, scrubwomen and chambermaids, kitchen-workers, food-handlers; and scores of obscure occupations which the rich never heard about. These people were housed in slum warrens

He had managed to get the good things in life, somehow—but why at least could he not go off and enjoy them, without coming to taunt the poor with their misfortune?

Which is better, to vote for what you want and can't get, or to vote for what you don't want and get it?

It was, he discovered, like all California towns, built haphazard, a jumble of anybody's whims, with half its spaces empty because people were holding them, waiting for values to rise.

He had been among diplomats enough to learn how they said something which seemed to mean something but didn't; how they put in weasel words which would sneak away with the substance of any sentence.

Lanny was concerned, because one of the Duce's demands was for Nice, and that might include Cannes and the Cap d'Antibes, Bienvenu and Beauty Budd. But Kurt said: "Do not worry. The jackal only takes what the lion allows him." Such was a Nazi agent's opinion of his ally.

Germany did really feed her children, and care for her aged, and build decent homes for the workers, all of which practices Beauty praised ardently—never dreaming that they had anything to do with the dreaded Socialism.

The reply was: "Whom shall I say, sir?"—in smart society the only persons who bother with grammar are the butler and the social secretary.

For when you let down the bars and admitted the right to lie and to cheat, you were undermining the very bases upon which human societies are built. Particularly when you admitted the right of political parties to lie and cheat, for how, then, could anybody have faith in them? How could their own followers know what they were or what they would become?

It was interesting to note that the town's five thousand people appeared well fed and sturdy. There was no lack of food in rural Germany; the starvation policy had been deliberate and followed from the beginning. The non-working prisoners had received one slice of bread and one dipper of thin soup twice a day; this amounted to about five hundred calories, about one-fourth of what it takes to maintain the weight of an average person at rest.

One might look at a Rembrandt picture, or hear a Beethoven symphony, without depriving others of the privilege; but one couldn't become an oil king without taking oil away from others.

Go forth, my son, and learn with how little wisdom the world is governed!

The plane was tiny; it had to be, because, as the pilot said, it must be able to come down on a half dollar. It flew as low as possible in order to escape detection by enemy radar. To be sure, that made a danger of church steeples and tall trees in the darkness; but then, as Frederick the Great had said to his troops, "Do you want to live forever?

Somebody was needed to point out to them that even though they had had to quit, they had not failed entirely. If they had published sound ideas and had found readers, their ideas would live in other minds and spawn and reproduce themselves after the manner of ideas.

No, among Catholics one did not question the purity of the Holy Virgin, and among Nazis one didn't question the honor of the Führer.