Between Two Worlds
Upton Sinclair
Top 10 Best Quotes
“which seemed to Lanny the great tragedy of the workers’ movement; he thought they had enemies enough among the capitalist class, without dividing among themselves. Yet he was forced to realize that if you believed revolutionary violence to be necessary, you were apt to be violent in advocating it; while if you believed in peaceable methods—well, apparently the men of violence would force you to be violent against them!”
“it’s a natural reaction against the futilities of so-called democracy. The people attempt a task which is beyond their powers, the governing of a modern state, and they are brought to a plight where they are glad to have a strong man get them out of it. The strong man studies the people, understands them better than they understand themselves, and promises them everything they want; he constructs a program with an appeal which they are powerless to resist. Say that he’s ‘fooling them,’ if you wish, but even so, he gets control, and having once got it, he keeps it—because modern weapons are so efficient that those who have them are masters, provided they are not afraid to use them. The machine gun and the airplane bomb with poison gas promise mankind a long era of firm government.”
“When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don’t I?” It was a remark that Lanny would never forget.”
“There were a few honest papers, but they reached only a small public; the big press was in the hands of the big interests, and told the people whatever suited the purposes of the masters of steel and munitions and oil.”
“The tang of autumn was in the air and the leaves were falling from the plane trees which line the streets of the towns and villages; the sun shone dazzling bright, and the tops of the mountains glittered like scenes in a fairy-tale. Long after the sun had disappeared the snow-caps were changing from pale pink to lilac and then deep purple. Stop and watch them—for it’s no good being so wrapped up in pictures that you can’t enjoy the realities which the pictures attempt to portray!”
“The pair practiced the French art of conversation, which meant that neither tried to force his ideas, but each brought forward such wit or wisdom as he possessed, and the other listened and in return received an equal share of attention.”
“The ladies and gentlemen of fashion didn’t know that such places existed; they could hardly believe you when you told them—and they wouldn’t thank you for having told them.”
“The best that anyone could do for the present was to build him a not too costly home in some part of the earth where there was no gold, oil, coal, or other mineral treasure, and which was not near a disputed boundary or strategic configuration of land or water. There with reasonable luck he might have peace within his own walls, and perhaps think some thoughts which might be helpful to a hate-tormented world.”
“The artist is by nature, one might say by definition, an anarchist. He lives in the freedom of his own imagination, and represents the experimental element of life. If “authority” should intervene and tell him what to think or to feel, the experiment would not be tried, the brain-child would be born dead.”
“The Fascisti would develop falsehood into a new science and a new art; they would teach it to one dictator after another, until half the human race would no longer have any means of telling truth from falsehood.”
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