The quotations of

Upton Sinclair

American writer

1878–1968

12 quotes, most often on Economics, Freedom and Money.

Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.
The Profits of Religion (1918), Introductory, “Bootstrap-lifting”
I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces.
Letter to the Louis D. Oaks, Los Angeles Chief of Police (17 May 1923)
- Courage
- Morality
Let us redeem our great words from base uses. Let that no longer call itself Love, which knows that it is not free!
Love’s Pilgrimage (1911)
- Freedom
- Love
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
Mammonart—an Essay in Economic Interpretation Ch. 2 Who Owns the Artists? (1925)
- Art
The American People will take Socialism, but they won’t take the label.
Letter to Norman Thomas (25 September 1951)
- America
- Politics
An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.
100%: the Story of a Patriot (1920), Section 2
- Writing
The story of the hero who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the phenomena, it was the science of early times.
The Profits of Religion (1918)
- Science
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.
The Jungle (1906), Chapter IIn context
- Failure
- Motivation & Goals
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?
The Jungle (1906), Chapter XXIIIIn context
- Religion
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.
The Jungle (1906), Chapter XXVIIIn context
- Freedom
- Money
There is no wilderness where I can hide from these things, there is no haven where I can escape them; though I travel to the ends of the earth, I find the same accursed system⁠—I find that all the fair and noble impulses of humanity, the dreams of poets and the agonies of martyrs, are shackled and bound in the service of organized and predatory Greed!
The Jungle (1906), Chapter XXVIIIIn context
- Economics
- Money
The working-man was to fix his hopes upon a future life, while his pockets were picked in this one; he was brought up to frugality, humility, obedience⁠—in short to all the pseudo-virtues of capitalism.
The Jungle (1906), Chapter XXXIIn context
- Economics
- Religion

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