Top 94 Upton Sinclair Quotes
#1. Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.
Upton Sinclair
#2. Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer.
Upton Sinclair
#3. They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
Upton Sinclair
#4. Of late years, however, since his children were growing up, he had begun to value respectability, and had had himself made a magistrate; a position for which he was admirably fitted, because of his strong conservatism and his contempt for foreigners.
Upton Sinclair
#5. Can you not see that the task is your task - yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute?
Upton Sinclair
#6. I just put on what the lady says. I've been married three times, so I've had lots of supervision.
Upton Sinclair
#7. I am sustained by a sense of the worthwhileness of what I am doing; a trust in the good faith of the process which created and sustains me. That process I call God.
Upton Sinclair
#8. Now I ask you: could any muck-raker in a rage make up a list of titles more completely expressive of vulgarity, commercialism and general "bunk" than the above real ones? I
Upton Sinclair
#9. They use everything about the hog except the squeal.
Upton Sinclair
#10. In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. So
Upton Sinclair
#11. The American people thoroughly despise and hate their newspapers; yet they seem to have no idea what to do about it, and take it for granted that they must go on reading falsehoods for the balance of their days!
Upton Sinclair
#12. It is impossible to get a man to understand something if his livelihood depends on him not understanding.
Upton Sinclair
#13. How could they find out that their tea and coffee, their sugar and flour, had been doctored; that their canned peas had been colored with copper salts, and their fruit jams with aniline dyes?
Upton Sinclair
#15. It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair
#17. The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.
Upton Sinclair
#18. All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will.
Upton Sinclair
#19. What, then, was the difference between America and Moscow? The "muckraker" said it was a question of who owned the state. In America the people were supposed to own it, but most of the time the big businessmen bought it away from them. "It is privilege which corrupts politics," was his phrase.
Upton Sinclair
#20. The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.
Upton Sinclair
#21. Pessimism is mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person.
Upton Sinclair
#22. The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.
Upton Sinclair
#23. Like all religious thinkers, he carries with his scholar's equipment a pair of metaphysical wings, wherewith at any moment he may soar into the empyrean, out of reach of vulgar materialists, like you and me.
Upton Sinclair
#24. He was carried over the difficult places in spite of himself; and he went plunging away in mad career - a very Mazeppa-ride upon the wild horse Speculation.
Upton Sinclair
#25. Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all.
Upton Sinclair
#26. Lanny smiled to himself. His chief called himself a "liberal," and Lanny had been trying to make up his mind just what that meant. He decided that a liberal was a high-minded gentleman who believed the world was made in his own image.
Upton Sinclair
#27. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my
country.
Upton Sinclair
#28. So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them.
Upton Sinclair
#29. It lives and breathes in the light, because it has thousands of unfortunates toiling in the darkness. It lives and has its being in proud liberty because thousands are slaving for it, whose thraldom is the price of this liberty. This
Upton Sinclair
#30. American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor.
Upton Sinclair
#31. He learned that love is not all pleasure, but can be agony and heartache, martyrdom and sacrifice. He learned what the clergyman was talking about in the marriage service: for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish till death do us part.
Upton Sinclair
#33. One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
Upton Sinclair
#34. It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.
Upton Sinclair
#35. But the devil is a subtle worm; he does not give up at one defeat, for he knows human nature, and the strength of the forces which battle for him.
Upton Sinclair
#37. This was in truth not living; it was scarcely even existing, and they felt that it was too little for the price they paid. They were willing to work all the time; and when people did their best, ought they not to be able to keep alive?
Upton Sinclair
#39. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art's sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore - and then there will be time enough for art.
Upton Sinclair
#40. Study and think and improve your mind, and keep it clear of all this fog of hatred and propaganda
Upton Sinclair
#41. When he came home that night he was in a very somber mood, having begun to see at last how those might be right who had laughed at him for his faith in America.
Upton Sinclair
#42. As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable!
Upton Sinclair
#43. I don't know whether anyone will care to examine my heart, but if they do, they will find two words there- 'social justice.' For that is what I have believed in and fought for.
Upton Sinclair
#44. Holidays - -such as Columbus Day - to be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth of church property exempted from taxation in New
Upton Sinclair
#45. The remedy [for the Great Depression] is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others, ... the American way.
Upton Sinclair
#46. All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.
Upton Sinclair
#47. In wartime it appeared that nobody wanted to see both sides of any question. IV
Upton Sinclair
#48. Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.
Upton Sinclair
#49. We define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.
Upton Sinclair
#50. The state might say that it had taken a year to write the book, and the author might say it had taken thirty. Goethe said that every bon mot of his had cost a purse of gold. What
Upton Sinclair
#51. The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country - from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.
Upton Sinclair
#52. To Jurgis the packers had been the equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people. Chapter 29, pg. 376
Upton Sinclair
#53. But he had been round the world enough to know that a man has to shift for himself in it, and that if he gets the worst of it, there is nobody to listen to him holler.
Upton Sinclair
#54. There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
Upton Sinclair
#55. Just what," answered the other, "would be the productive capacity of society if the present resources of science were utilized, we have no means of ascertaining; but we may be sure it would exceed anything that would sound reasonable to minds inured to the ferocious barbarities of capitalism. After
Upton Sinclair
#56. The police, and the strikers also, were determined that there should be no violence; but there was another party interested which was minded to the contrary - and that was the press.
Upton Sinclair
#57. I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
Upton Sinclair
#58. Lanny, climbing the hill, carried a thought which by now had become his familiar companion: Why, oh, why did men have to make their lives so ugly? What evil spell was upon them that they wrangled and scolded, hated and feared? He
Upton Sinclair
#59. The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
Upton Sinclair
#60. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning?
Upton Sinclair
#61. Was it a fact that every man had something in his life which palsied his arm, and struck him helpless in the battle for social justice? When
Upton Sinclair
#62. Can you blame me if I am pursued by the thought of how much we could do to remedy social evils, if only we had an honest and disinterested press?
Upton Sinclair
#63. It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep's clothing.
Upton Sinclair
#64. Through fasting ... I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans.
Upton Sinclair
#65. You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair
#66. It appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.
Upton Sinclair
#67. The state of California; state support for parish schools - or, if this cannot be had, exemption
Upton Sinclair
#68. You don't have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn't like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I've been trying to change it ever since.
Upton Sinclair
#69. He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago - after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms.
Upton Sinclair
#71. she was standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature.
Upton Sinclair
#72. If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.
Upton Sinclair
#73. To do that would mean, not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat- and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going.
Upton Sinclair
#75. All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
Upton Sinclair
#76. A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life.
Upton Sinclair
#77. Military men say that troops can stand twenty percent losses; more than that, they go to pieces. But we had many an outfit with only twenty percent survivors and they went on fighting.
Upton Sinclair
#78. It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest.
Upton Sinclair
#79. He had no affection left in his life - only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice.
Upton Sinclair
#80. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests - and so perfectly within their rights!
Upton Sinclair
#81. If you look at the people on this train, you will see that they are dressed much alike. The train itself is a standard product, and by means of it we travel from town to town selling products which are messengers of internationalism.
Upton Sinclair
#82. In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death.
Upton Sinclair
#83. Everywhere I turn I see it - credulity being exploited, and men of practical judgment, watching the game and seeing through it, made hard in their attitude of materialism. How
Upton Sinclair
#84. 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.
Upton Sinclair
#85. And the wild beast rose up within him and screamed, as it had screamed in the Jungle from the dawn of time.
Upton Sinclair
#86. It is the music which makes it what it is; it is the music which changes the place from the rear room of a saloon in back of the yards to a fairy place, a wonderland, a little comer of the high mansions of the sky.
Upton Sinclair
#87. Hitler was calling upon Almighty God to give him courage and strength to save the German people and right the wrongs of Versailles...and then to settle down and govern the county in the interest of those millions of oppressed "little people" for whom he spoke so eloquently.
Upton Sinclair
#88. The first thing brought forth by the study of any religion, ancient or modern, is that it is based upon Fear, born of it, fed by it - and that it cultivates the source from which its nourishment is derived.
Upton Sinclair
#89. I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these ancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which cannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes.
Upton Sinclair
#90. Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.
Upton Sinclair
#91. An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.
Upton Sinclair
#92. They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.
Upton Sinclair
#93. Not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat - and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The
Upton Sinclair
#94. What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich?
Upton Sinclair
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