Upton Sinclair was an American author and social activist. He wrote over 100 books and many essays during his lifetime. His most famous work is The Jungle, a 1906 novel about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry.
What is the most famous quote by Upton Sinclair ?
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair
What can you learn from Upton Sinclair (Life Lessons)
- Upton Sinclair's work emphasizes the importance of standing up for what is right and fighting against injustice. He believed that people should strive to create a better world and that it is possible to make a difference in the world.
- Sinclair also taught the importance of being self-reliant and taking responsibility for one's own life. He believed that people should take charge of their own destiny and not rely on others for their success.
- Upton Sinclair's work also emphasizes the importance of education and knowledge. He believed that knowledge was the key to success and that people should strive to learn as much as possible.
The most successful Upton Sinclair quotes that are life-changing and eye-opening
Following is a list of the best Upton Sinclair quotes, including various Upton Sinclair inspirational quotes, and other famous sayings by Upton Sinclair.
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.
Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.
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.
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.
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.
Socialist quotes by Upton Sinclair
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.
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.
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.
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.
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.
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?
In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.
Pessimism is mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person.
Quotations by Upton Sinclair that are fiction and activism
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.
They use everything about the hog except the squeal.
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.
I just put on what the lady says. I've been married three times, so I've had lots of supervision.
In the twilight, it was a vision of power.
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.
Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse.
I have not only found good health, but perfect health; I have found a new state of being, a potentiality of life; a sense of lightness and cleanness and joyfulness, such as I did not know could exist in the human body.
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters.
Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the church's opposition to every advance in every field of science. . . .
They were the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble and listen. 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 managed to get a decent existence for their bodies?
It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence.
You can't make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it.
We define journalism in America as the business and practice of presenting the news of the day in the interest of economic privilege.
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.
Through fasting. . .I have found a perfect health, a new state of existence, a feeling of purity and happiness, something unknown to humans.
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.
American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor.
There are a score of great religions in the world, each with scores or hundreds of sects, each with its priestly orders, its complicated creed and ritual, its heavens and hells. Each has its thousands or millions or hundreds of millions of true believers each damns all the others with more or less heartiness - and each is a mighty fortress of graft.
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.
When the masters of industry pay such sums for a newspaper, they buy not merely the building and the presses and the name; they buy what they call the "good-will"- that is, they buy you. And they proceed to change your whole psychology - everything that you believe about life. You might object to it, if you knew; but they do their work so subtly that you never guess what is happening to you!
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.
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.
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. He is humiliated by his simian ancestry, and tries to deny his animal nature, to persuade himself that he is not limited by its weaknesses nor concerned in its fate. And this impulse may be harmless, when it is genuine. But what are we to say when we see the formulas of heroic self-deception made use of by unheroic self-indulgence?
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.
Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers.
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.