A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief.
Upton SinclairAnd as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.
Upton SinclairOne of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
Upton SinclairThe old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
Upton SinclairIn a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power.
Upton SinclairWhen 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!
Upton Sinclair