Quotes from Upton Sinclair

But they were civilized cats, which had learned manners, and applied psychology, pretending to be gentle and harmless, even amiable. The deadliest killers wore the most cordial smiles; the most cunning were the most dignified, the most exalted. They had a great cause, an historic destiny, a patriotic duty, an inspired leader. They said: "We are building a new Germany," and at the same time they thought: "How can I cut out this fellow's guts?

All news was propaganda now; you had to learn the special slant of each station and discount its brand of falsification or suppression.

What shall we say to the wicked man to make him be good, if we cannot reward him with a heaven and frighten him with a hell? Well, my first answer is that we have been trying this process for a couple of thousand years, and the results seem to indicate that we might better seek out some other method of inducing men to behave themselves.

They went down and saw the crowds welcoming the landing parties with wild cheering. This was the phenomenon which so greatly puzzled the G.I.'s; first they were killed and then they were cheered. The G.I.'s had been well trained in shooting, but nobody had troubled to explain to them the class struggle which existed in France; how the great mass of the people wanted peace and bread, while the higher officers of Army and Navy wanted la gloire and l'honneur.

These were the men of money, masters of the life of France. They told the workers where to live and what work to do; they told the editors what to publish, and thus told the French public what to believe; they told the politicians how to vote, which meant telling the police whom to arrest and the soldiers whom to shoot.

The consequences of the deal with the Darlan-Noguès outfit were the same here as in Algiers; perhaps even a little worse, because of General Patton, himself a reactionary martinet. The deal had saved many American lives, but it imperiled American principles and exposed American officers to temptations against which they had no weapons.

They had the same saying as Americans: "Les affaires sont les affaires"—business is business. When you said that, you set moral considerations aside as irrelevant; the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God were idle dreams; liberty, equality, and fraternity were bait to catch votes; the only question was, did you have the price?

It was the Franco procedure all over again, and among the conspirators were Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, and General Weygand, who had been Foch's chief of staff; also Chiappe, the Corsican head of the Paris police, and Doriot, former Communist leader said to have sold out his party and bought himself an estate in Belgium with money got from the Nazis. CSAR was the name of this group

forty thousand of them. It was a

It was the Franco procedure all over again, and among the conspirators were Marshal Pétain, the hero of Verdun, and General Weygand, who had been Foch's chief of staff; also Chiappe, the Corsican head of the Paris police, and Doriot, former Communist leader said to have sold out his party and bought himself an estate in Belgium with money got from the Nazis. CSAR was the name of this group—Comité pour Secret Action Révolutiormaire—

In that country, rich or poor, a man was free... So America was a place of which lovers and young people dreamed.

Free speech doesn't overthrow governments," answered the other. "It's the lack of free speech.

They respected this "old man," because he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also they liked him, because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he was simple and unpretentious—when the work was crowded, you would have him eating his beans and coffee on a stool in the "eats" joint alongside you. He

Why hang a man who was so ready to hang himself?

Lanny identified him with Montmartre and imagined a bow tie and a beret, except that he knew the Nazis had banned the wearing of berets, which was classified among "demonstrations harmful to the state.

what we need is not more emotion, but more thought. It is very hard to think; this is a new power that our race has acquired only a short time ago. We find it easy to weep or to rage, to shout for joy or scold in anger; but to think

But wait till the war's over, and the countries of Europe vote Red or Pink, as they're sure to do, and the Boss stands by them, as I know he will. Then you'll see these big fellows foaming at the mouth, and that's the time they will act. We'll discover then that American Fascism is more deadly than either Italian or German, because our masters have more money, and believe more in money power, and are more used to having their own way in all things.

The French word for underbrush, maquis, had come to be the name for the men who hid in it and came out to carry on sabotage against the enemy. "Monsieur," said Baritone, "we have the enemy's own figures that more than forty thousand Frenchmen have been executed during the occupation, and a hundred thousand are in concentration camps in Germany. This in addition to the quarter million who have been deported.

If you wanted to understand a politician you mustn't pay too much attention to his speeches, but find out who were his paymasters. A politician couldn't rise in public life, in France any more than in America, unless he had the backing of big money, and it was in times of crisis like this that he paid his debts.

the souls of none of them were dead, but only sleeping; now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times.

A singular thing—he was a devout Catholic, went every morning to mass, and kneeled to a merciful redeemer who had said: "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." Little French children, of course; no little German children!

Never by chance will you say anything about there being starvation outside the gates; and if the owner takes you to the Episcopal Church or the Catholic, you will not quote what you hear about laying up for yourselves treasures on earth, or about how "the Lord hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.

The Communists, who preached dictatorship, used the freedom of France to tear down that freedom: so said the capitalist press, and in order to protect freedom they proposed to destroy freedom and set up an anti-dictatorship dictatorship. Look at Daladier and his "governing by decree"!

In every newspaper-office in America the same struggle between the business-office and the news-department is going on all the time.