Upton Sinclair, a renowned Californian novelist and muckraking journalist, is best known for “The Jungle,” a novel exposing the dire conditions in the meat-packing industry, which led to the Pure Food and Drug Act.
Although he penned numerous works, covering diverse topics and even receiving a Pulitzer Prize for a novel on Hitler, Sinclair is also remembered for his 1934 gubernatorial bid in California.
As a declared socialist, he faced significant opposition from the establishment, with the media launching a massive smear campaign against him.
Two political miscalculations cost him the election: his willingness to defer his EPIC plan for Roosevelt’s national insurance system and his opposition to the Townsend Plan, which alienated his supporters.
Sinclair garnered 37% of the votes, losing to the Republican candidate. Notably, before and after the election, he penned books detailing his ambitious vision for ending poverty.
I have made a list of the best quotes by Upton Sinclair.
Top 5 Upton Sinclair Quotes
Fascism is capitalism plus murder. ~ Upton Sinclair.
They use everything about the hog except the squeal. ~ Upton Sinclair.
Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers. ~ 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.
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.
Quotes by 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.
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.
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.
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.
The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama, wrote the Jewish financier. “In times to come people will refuse to believe it. ~ 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.
Best Upton Sinclair Quotes
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 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.
Do not let other people invade your personality. Remember that every human being is a unique phenomenon, and worth developing. You will meet many who have no resources of their own, and who will try to fasten themselves upon you. You will find others eager to tell you what to do and think and be. But it is better to go apart and learn to be yourself. ~ Upton Sinclair.
All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, someone else will. ~ Upton Sinclair.
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. ~ 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 was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the cooler,” and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest. ~ 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.
Famous Upton Sinclair Quotes
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.
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.
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.
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! ~ Upton Sinclair.
Pessimism is a mental disease. It means illness in the person who voices it, and in the society which produces that person. ~ Upton Sinclair.
I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach. ~ Upton Sinclair.
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. ~ Upton Sinclair.
Interesting Upton Sinclair Quotes
In the twilight, it was a vision of power. ~ Upton Sinclair.
Hitler was calling upon Almighty God to give him courage and strength to save the German people and right the wrongs of Versailles… and then to settle down and govern the county in the interest of those millions of oppressed little people for whom he spoke so eloquently. ~ 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.
As if political liberty made wage slavery any the more tolerable! ~ Upton Sinclair.
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. ~ Upton Sinclair.
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. ~ 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.
Over the vast plain I wander, observing a thousand strange and incredible and terrifying manifestations of the Bootstrap-lifting impulse. ~ Upton Sinclair.
Popular Upton Sinclair Quotes
It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ~ 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.
What are we to say when we see asceticism preached to the poor by fat and comfortable retainers of the rich? ~ Upton Sinclair.
Here was one more difficulty for him to meet and conquer. ~ 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.
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.
Profound Upton Sinclair Quotes
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself. ~ Upton Sinclair.
American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor. ~ 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 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.
It is not the New Inquisition which is our enemy today; it is hereditary Privilege. It is not Superstition, but Big Business which makes use of Superstition as a wolf makes use of sheep’s clothing. ~ Upton Sinclair.
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery. ~ Upton Sinclair.
If you look at the people on this train, you will see that they are dressed much alike. The train itself is a standard product, and by means of it we travel from town to town selling products which are messengers of internationalism. ~ Upton Sinclair.
I say there is no modern evil which cannot be justified by these ancient texts; and there is nowhere in Christendom a clergy which cannot be persuaded to cite them at the demand of ruling classes. ~ Upton Sinclair.
So these were the 50 top quotes about Upton Sinclair.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Anton Lavey quotes and Alfa Holden quotes.
