Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. was an American writer who wrote nearly 100 books and other works in several genres. Sinclair’s work was well known and popular in the first half of the 20th century, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1943. Inspirational Upton Sinclair quotes will brighten up your day and make you feel ready to take on anything.
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Famous Upton Sinclair Quotes
American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor. Upton Sinclair
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
It is foolish to be convinced without evidence, but it is equally foolish to refuse to be convinced by real evidence. Upton Sinclair
I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. 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. Upton Sinclair
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. Upton Sinclair
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption. Upton Sinclair
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda. Upton Sinclair
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
They use everything about the hog except the squeal. Upton Sinclair
I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. Upton Sinclair
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
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. Upton Sinclair
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. Upton Sinclair
The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC End Poverty in California. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to End Poverty in California I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out flank them. Upton Sinclair
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption. Uptown Sinclair
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery. Upton Sinclair
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
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. Upton Sinclair
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
You can’t make somebody understand something if their salary depends upon them not understanding it. Upton Sinclair
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
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! Upton Sinclair
It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork making by machinery, pork making by applied mathematics. 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! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold blooded, impersonal way, without pretence at apology, without the homage of a tear. Upton Sinclair
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
One could not stand and watch very long without being philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart’s desire; each was full of self confidence, of self importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him, and a horrid Fate in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, all his protests, his screams were nothing to it. It did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. Upton Sinclair
American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor. 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. Upton Sinclair
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
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
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
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
They use everything about the hog except the squeal. Upton Sinclair
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
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. Upton Sinclair
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. Upton Sinclair
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. Upton Sinclair
So he went on, tearing up all the flowers from the garden of his soul, and setting his heel upon them. Upton Sinclair
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
All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty three instead of twenty two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. 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
Consider Christmas could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination of graft plus bunkum than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the Western world is made ill from overeating all in the name of the lowly Jesus? Upton Sinclair
Can you not see that the task is your task yours to dream, yours to resolve, yours to execute? Upton Sinclair
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. Upton Sinclair
Nobody rose in Packingtown by doing good work. You could lay that down for a rule if you met a man who was rising in Packingtown, you met a knave. That man who had been sent to Jurgis father by the boss, he would rise; 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 throw him into the gutter. Upton Sinclair
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
Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers. Upton Sinclair
In a society dominated by the fact of commercial competition, money is necessarily the test of prowess, and wastefulness the sole criterion of power. Upton Sinclair
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
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
As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! Upton Sinclair
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
Surely it is moderate to say that the dish washing for a family of five takes half an hour a day; with ten hours as a day’s work, it takes, therefore, half a million able bodied persons mostly women to do the dish washing of the country. And note that this is most filthy and deadening and brutalizing work that it is a cause of anemia, nervousness, ugliness, and ill temper of prostitution, suicide, and insanity; of drunken husbands and degenerate children for all of which things the community has naturally to pay. 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. Upton Sinclair
Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold, his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. He saw the world of civilization then more plainly than ever he had seen it before; a world in which nothing counted but brutal might, an order devised by those who possessed it for the subjugation of those who did not. Upton Sinclair
Pessimism is mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person. Upton Sinclair
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 Sinclair
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
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
Turn over the pages of history and read the damning record of the church’s opposition to every advance in every field of science. Upton Sinclair
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
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
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
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. Upton Sinclair
The gates of memory would roll open old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. Upton Sinclair
All day long this man would toil thus, his whole being centered upon the purpose of making twenty three instead of twenty two and a half cents an hour; and then his product would be reckoned up by the census taker, and jubilant captains of industry would boast of it in their banquet halls, telling how our workers are nearly twice as efficient as those of any other country. 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
The great packing machine ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing, not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life. Upton Sinclair
I just put on what the lady says. I’ve been married three times, so I’ve had lots of supervision. Upton Sinclair
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
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
Here was a population, low class and mostly foreign, hanging always on the verge of starvation, and dependent for its opportunities of life upon the whim of men every bit as brutal and unscrupulous as the old time slave drivers; under such circumstances immorality was exactly as inevitable, and as prevalent, as it was under the system of chattel slavery. Upton Sinclair
And 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 Sinclair
In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water’s edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving. Upton Sinclair
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
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
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? Upton Sinclair
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside. Upton Sinclair
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
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
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. Upton Sinclair
