if men and women would be human beings instead of just business men, or plumbers, or army officers, or commuters, or educators, or authors, or clubwomen, or traveling salesmen, or Socialists, or Republicans, or Salvation Army leaders, or wearers of cloths.
SINCLAIR LEWISSo that the thrifty and industrious have to pay for the shiftless ne’er-do-weels, then maybe, to save their lazy souls and get some iron into them, a war might be a good thing? Come on, now, tell your real middle name, Mong General!
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman.
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NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.
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I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence.
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Good Lord, I don’t know what ‘rights’ a man has! And I don’t know the solution of boredom. If I did, I’d be the one philosopher that had the cure for living. But I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull.
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You’ve been telling us about how to secure peace, but come on, now, General-just among us Rotarians and Rotary Anns-‘fess up!
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Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn “reasonable” and become your enemies.
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We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.’ For ten thousand years they’ve said that. We want our Utopia now — and we’re going to try our hands at it.
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She was snatched back from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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We’re tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers… coax us, ‘Be calm! Be patient! Wait!
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With your great experience, don’t you honest, cross-your-heart, think that perhaps-just maybe-when a country has gone money-mad, like all our labor unions and workmen, with their propaganda to hoist income taxes.
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We’re tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We’re tired of always deferring hope till the next generation.
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The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, “The trouble with this country is….”
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It’s one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
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When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, ’tain’t any laughing matter!
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There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.
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I’ve heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I’ve never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.
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Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead.
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Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer.
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Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse.
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Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicated to the sayings of Confucius.
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The game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.”
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Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.
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What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues.
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His name was George F. Babbitt, and . . . he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.
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Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously.
SINCLAIR LEWIS