Sinclair’s was also an age when writers, both journalists and novelists, were experiencing a thrilling sense of their own efficacy. The investigative exposé—what President Theodore Roosevelt would unf...
I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
Proceeded to clear a way to the hall. Once
They were often very turbulent meetings, with half a dozen men declaiming at once, in as many dialects of English; but the speakers were all desperately in earnest, and Jurgis was in earnest too, for...
And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials...
Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad; but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own condition, and only make him madder by trying.
He seemed to be growing conservative, allying himself with Göring’s friends, the great industrialists, and forgetting the promises he had made to the common man.
The man who told tales and spied upon his fellows would rise; but the man who minded his own business and did his work—why, they would speed him up till they had worn him out, and then they would thro...
Forty thousand of them. It was a
And impatience sets traps for us, and prepares regrets that sometimes last all our lives.
Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and his arms upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance. Ten thousand curses upon them and their law! Their justice—it wa...
Not merely to be defeated, but to acknowledge defeat—and the difference between these two things is what keeps the world going. The
What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich?
The veselija has come down to them from a far-off time; and the meaning of it was that one might dwell within the cave and gaze upon shadows, provided only that once in his lifetime he could break his...
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
Adolf Hitler facts had no meaning except as they served his purpose.
The dark shadow of conflict was looming over the world again; but no use to say it, for people didn’t want to believe it and they knew how to believe what they chose.
Proposal was
If I could, I would begin this book by telling you what Life is. But unfortunately I do not know what Life is. The only consolation I can find is in the fact that nobody else knows either.
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 cunnin...