In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
SINCLAIR LEWISWe’d get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.
More Sinclair Lewis Quotes
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My objection to the church isn’t that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too .
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It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.
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Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.
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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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I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We’re tired of drudging and sleeping and dying.
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People read fiction for emotion-not information
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A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party.
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Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by.
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The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.
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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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Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country.
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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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Is it possible that nobody has ever known that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won’t be for another thousand years?
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Winter is not a season, it’s an occupation.
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Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.
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Life is hard and astonishingly complicated…. No one great reform will make it easy.
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You’re so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.
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That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.
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Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
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Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.
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Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure–wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.
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But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.
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People will buy anything that is one to a customer.
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So much in a revolution is nothing but waiting.
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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.
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Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.
SINCLAIR LEWIS