Upton Sinclair Quotes

For almost a century since 1918, the centralised nation-state has been the world's default political form. Its various experiments in industrialisation, urbanisation, mass literacy and consumerism have brought more people into public life.

The ruling classes today nourish the conviction that national hatreds and rivalries are inevitable.

Our battle is against the bourgeoisie as the enemy of German Socialism and the saboteur of national freedom.

I no longer know of political party, I only know Germans

The democratic political institutions of Western countries arose and matured as industrial capitalism matured. It was a time of historically unprecedented economic growth and the concomitant development of new social groupings and relationships. They arose in elite political cultures that were in the main ethnically homogeneous, even if, notably in the American case, the society at large was considerably less so.

English labor and Continental socialism do not speak at all the same language. Such differences in terminology are the external expression of differences that strike deeper and are due to the various social environments in which contemporary socialism has been formed and developed.

China is trying to become America without democracy while America is trying to become France without cheese calories.

In Cuba we have one party, but in the U.S. there is very little difference. Both parties are an expression of the ruling class.

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

I think we have a rawer version of capitalism and a more fragile community and family base than other nations. We are a more individualistic culture. From the Boston Tea Party on, we've had too little faith in government.

It has often been said, that there is but one rank of men in America… we have no artificial distinctions of men into noblemen and commoners among us, but it ought to be remarked, that superior degrees of industry and capacity, and above all, commerce, have introduced inequality of property among us, and these have introduced natural distinctions of rank in Pennsylvania, as certain and general as the artificial distinctions of men in Europe. This will ever be the case while commerce exists in this country.

It is well known that German intellectuals are reluctant to agree with French intellectuals and the French are reluctant to agree with the German.

My friends Sir Roger de Coverly and Sir Andrew Freeport are of different principles, the first of them inclined to the landed and the other to the moneyed interest.

We must beware of trying to build a society in which nobody counts for anything except a politician or an official, a society where enterprise gains no reward and thrift no privileges.

A political movement is that in which the proletarians as a class exert pressure against the ruling classes.

The Communist Party and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are the same in some ways ... To stay in power you've got to give people a good life and improve the economy.

In time the Democratic party will fade away and we will have a capitalistic party and a socialistic party.

We must take from the right nationalism without capitalism and from the left socialism without internationalism.

By birth Mr. Roosevelt is an aristocrat. An unfeigned interest in the lives of his fellow millions has made a democrat of him, and through both channels he draws that social understanding …. But partly from the consciousness of a lack of sympathy for his "class," and partly from the inevitable sense that his lot is cast with the multitude, it is the democrat in him which has gained the permanent ascendency.

Everything changes.... Social life changes, and with it the "national question" changes, too. At different periods different classes enter the arena, and each class has its own view of the "national question." Consequently, in different periods the "national question" serves different interests and assumes different shades, according to which class raises it, and when.

Since the war [WWII], the world has been rushing forward at an unprecedented and exhilarating speed … Yet Britain lags behind, lacking the will or the plan which can bring this future within the reach of us all.

A nationalist movement seeks its own country. A nationalist party seeks a country that will keep electing it.

Fascism is essentially a typically Italian movement. Such it remains whether we consider it as a political party or as a phase of our national revolution--and even more so in the latter case; for Fascism, though in the guise of a political party, is a capital factor in the formation of the modern Italian state.

Abandoned by the industrial aristocracy, abandoned by the ex-soldiers who have once more been impregnated with the ancient democratic spirit of the nation, and by the generals who had led the Italian armies to victory and who on becoming members of the Senate have voted there against the Government, Fascism finds itself supported solely by the landed proprietors and by its own militia, which constitutes the only army of a party known to modern Europe.

It is important not to confuse the national spirit with that of the faction which presently dominates…