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Sinclair's was also an age when writers, both journalists and novelists, were experiencing a thrilling sense of their own efficacy. The investigative expose--what President Theodore Roosevelt would unflatteringly dub "muckraking," after the character in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684) who could "look no way but downward, with a muckrake in his hands"--had taken the magazine and publishing world by storm, had grabbed hold o..
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Upton Sinclair |
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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 was a lie, it was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black and hateful for any world but a world of nightmares. It was a sham and a loathsome mockery. There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it--it was only force, it was tyr..
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Upton Sinclair |
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he had no affection left in his life--only the pitiful mockery of it in the camaraderie of vice.
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Upton Sinclair |
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but he had been round the world enough to know that a man has to shift for himself in it, and that if he gets the worst of it, there is nobody to listen to him holler.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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!
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Upton Sinclair |
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He is playing a bass part upon his cello, and so the excitement is nothing to him; no matter what happens in the treble, it is his task to saw out one long-drawn and lugubrious note after another, from four o'clock in the afternoon until nearly the same hour next morning, for his third of the total income of one dollar per hour.
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Upton Sinclair |
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One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature.
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Upton Sinclair |
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holidays---such as Columbus Day--to be celebrated by all Protestants in America; thirty million dollars worth of church property exempted from taxation in New
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Upton Sinclair |
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the state of California; state support for parish schools--or, if this cannot be had, exemption
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Upton Sinclair |
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He forgot how he himself had been blind, a short time ago--after the fashion of all crusaders since the original ones, who set out to spread the gospel of Brotherhood by force of arms.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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 who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now
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Upton Sinclair |
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it.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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 chains, and feel his wings, and behold the sun; provided that once in his lifetime he might testify to the fact that life, with all its cares and its terrors, is no such great thing after all, but merely a bubble upon the surface of a river, a..
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Upton Sinclair |
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it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny;
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Upton Sinclair |
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universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Jurgis had come there, and thought he was going to make himself useful, and rise and become a skilled man; but he would soon find out his error--for 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.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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."
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Upton Sinclair |
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What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich?
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Upton Sinclair |
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Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown; yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he had as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new opportunities; and bein..
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Upton Sinclair |
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They had always been accustomed to eat a great deal of smoked sausage, and how could they know that what they bought in America was not the same--that its color was made by chemicals, and its smoky flavor by more chemicals, and that it was full of "potato flour" besides? Potato flour is the waste of potato after the starch and alcohol have been extracted; it has no more food value than so much wood, and as its use as a food adulterant is a ..
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Upton Sinclair |
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A world conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon--another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities, both good and bad--iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples ..
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Upton Sinclair |
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Of late years, however, since his children were growing up, he had begun to value respectability, and had had himself made a magistrate; a position for which he was admirably fitted, because of his strong conservatism and his contempt for "foreigners."
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Upton Sinclair |
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They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Say the very simplest and most obvious things, say them as often as possible, and put into the saying all the screaming passion which one human voice can carry--that was Adolf Hitler's technique.
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Upton Sinclair |
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When I invest my money in an American company, I become an American, don't I?
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Upton Sinclair |
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Play your music, read your books, think your own thoughts, and never let yourselves be drawn into an argument! Not an altogether satisfactory way of life, but the only one possible in times when the world is changing so fast that parents and children may be a thousand years apart in their ideas and ideals.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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. Things that were quite unspeakable went on there in the packing houses all the time, an..
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Upton Sinclair |
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be yourself." Great-Great-Uncle Eli"
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Upton Sinclair |
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be yourself." Great-Great-Uncle Eli was a "transcendentalist," having known many of the old New England group. There is something in us all, he said, that is greater than ourselves, that works through us and can be used in the making of character. The central core of life is personality. To respect the personality of others is the beginning of virtue, and to enforce respect for it is the first duty of the individual toward all forms of gove..
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Upton Sinclair |
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and impatience sets traps for us, and prepares regrets that sometimes last all our lives.
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Upton Sinclair |
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wartime it appeared that nobody wanted to see both sides of any question.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Friendship is a delightful thing when you have had the good judgment to choose the right friends.
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Upton Sinclair |
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The young people come along, and clamor so loudly for their share, and have so little idea of the pain that awaits them. One's heart aches at the knowledge, but one cannot tell them; they have to have their own way and pay their own penalties.
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Upton Sinclair |
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This Hitler movement was a revolt of the lower middle classes, whose savings had been wiped out by the inflation and who saw themselves being reduced to the status of proletarians.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Montesquieu had said that to love reading was to exchange hours of boredom for hours of delight; Laharpe had said that a book is a friend that never deceives.
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Upton Sinclair |
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No matter whether it was true or not--for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn't dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God's truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it--shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one perso..
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Upton Sinclair |
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Such was the new technique for the conquest of power. Fool those who were foolable, buy those who were buyable, and kill the rest.
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Upton Sinclair |
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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.
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philosophy
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Upton Sinclair |
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So it is that political parties degenerate; so the common people give their devotion to a cause, and discover too late how they have been betrayed.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Adolf Hitler facts had no meaning except as they served his purpose.
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Upton Sinclair |
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political opinions were an arsenal of weapons from which he picked up those which served his need at a certain moment of conflict. When conscientious,
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Upton Sinclair |
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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.
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Upton Sinclair |
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Political slogans are like grain scattered to draw birds into a snare. Find out who's putting up the money for a political party, and then you know what it will do.
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Upton Sinclair |