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The American People Will Take Socialism, But They Won't Take The Label. I Certainly Proved It In The Case Of Epic [end Poverty In California]. Running On The Socialist Ticket I Got 60,000 Votes, And Running On The Slogan To 'end Poverty In California' I Got 879,000. I Think We Simply Have To Recognize The Fact That Our Enemies Have Succeeded In Spreading The Big Lie. There Is No Use Attacking It By A Front Attack, It Is Much Better To Out-flank Them.

-Upton Sinclair

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The American People Will

Upton Sinclair

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The American People Will Take Socialism, But They Won't Take The Label. I Certainly Proved It In The Case Of Epic [end Poverty In California]. Running On The Socialist Ticket I Got 60,000 Votes, And Running On The Slogan To 'end Poverty In California' I Got 879,000. I Think We Simply Have To Recognize The Fact That Our Enemies Have Succeeded In Spreading The Big Lie. There Is No Use Attacking It By A Front Attack, It Is Much Better To Out-flank Them.

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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.

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.

Captains Of Industry

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In The Twilight, It Was A Vision Of Power.

Journalism Is One Of The Devices Whereby Industrial Autocracy Keeps Its Control Over Political Democracy; It Is The Day-by-day, Between-elections Propaganda, Whereby The Minds Of The People Are Kept In A State Of Acquiescence, So That When The Crisis Of An Election Comes, They Go To The Polls And Cast Their Ballots For Either One Of The Two Candidates Of Their Exploiters.

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.

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.

Pessimism Is Mental Disease. It Means Illness In The Person Who Voices It, And In The Society Which Produces That Person.

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.

Into This Wild-beast Tangle These Men Had Been Born Without Their Consent, They Had Taken Part In It Because They Could Not Help It; That They Were In Jail Was No Disgrace To Them, For The Game Had Never Been Fair, The Dice Were Loaded. 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.

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.

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.

But I Have A Conscience And A Religious Faith, And I Know That Our Liberties Were Not Won Without Suffering, And May Be Lost Again Through Our Cowardice. I Intend To Do My Duty To My Country.

They Use Everything About The Hog Except The Squeal.

Turn Over The Pages Of History And Read The Damning Record Of The Church's Opposition To Every Advance In Every Field Of Science. . . .

Over The Vast Plain I Wander, Observing A Thousand Strange And Incredible And Terrifying Manifestations Of The Bootstrap-lifting Impulse.

All Day Long This Man Would Toil Thus, His Whole Being Centered Upon The Purpose Of Making Twenty-three Instead Of Twenty-two And A Half Cents An Hour; And Then His Product Would Be Reckoned Up By The Census Taker, And Jubilant Captains Of Industry Would Boast Of It In Their Banquet Halls, Telling How Our Workers Are Nearly Twice As Efficient As Those Of Any Other Country. 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.

Fascism Is Capitalism Plus Murder.

The Remedy [for The Great Depression] Is To Give The Workers Access To The Means Of Production, And Let Them Produce For Themselves, Not For Others, . . . The American Way.

And As For Other Men, Who Worked In Tank-rooms Full Of Steam, And In Some Of Which There Were Open Vats Near The Level Of The Floor, Their Peculiar Trouble Was That They Fell Into The Vats; And When They Were Fished Out, There Was Never Enough Of Them Left To Be Worth Exhibiting,-sometimes They Would Be Overlooked For Days, Till All But The Bones Of Them Had Gone Out Into The World As Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This Contributed To The Passing Of The Pure Food Act Of 1906.

Through Fasting. . .i Have Found A Perfect Health, A New State Of Existence, A Feeling Of Purity And Happiness, Something Unknown To Humans.

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Man Is An Evasive Beast, Given To Cultivating Strange Notions About Himself. He Is Humiliated By His Simian Ancestry, And Tries To Deny His Animal Nature, To Persuade Himself That He Is Not Limited By Its Weaknesses Nor Concerned In Its Fate. And This Impulse May Be Harmless, When It Is Genuine. But What Are We To Say When We See The Formulas Of Heroic Self-deception Made Use Of By Unheroic Self-indulgence?

There Are A Score Of Great Religions In The World, Each With Scores Or Hundreds Of Sects, Each With Its Priestly Orders, Its Complicated Creed And Ritual, Its Heavens And Hells. Each Has Its Thousands Or Millions Or Hundreds Of Millions Of True Believers Each Damns All The Others With More Or Less Heartiness - And Each Is A Mighty Fortress Of Graft.

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.

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A Large Section Of The Idling Classes Of England Get Their Incomes By Believing That Jesus Was Born Of A Virgin And That Jonah Swallowed A Whale; And With The Progress Of Science They Were Naturally Finding This More And More Difficult. A School Of Ingenious Bible-twisters Arose, To Invent Symbolical And Literary Meanings For Fairy Tales, In Order That People Who No Longer Believed Could Continue With Good Conscience To Collect The Salaries Of Belief.

All Art Is Propaganda. It Is Universally And Inescabably Propaganda; Sometimes Unconsciously, But Often Deliberately, Propaganda.

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.

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I Just Put On What The Lady Says. I've Been Married Three Times, So I've Had Lots Of Supervision.

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It Was All So Very Businesslike That One Watched It Fascinated. It Was Pork-making By Machinery, Pork-making By Applied Mathematics. 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! They Had Done Nothing To Deserve It; And It Was Adding Insult To Injury, As The Thing Was Done Here, Swinging Them Up In This Cold-blooded, Impersonal Way, Without Pretence At Apology, Without The Homage Of A Tear.

Insult To Injury

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.

Man Is An Evasive Beast, Given To Cultivating Strange Notions About Himself.

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