Dragon's Teeth Quotes

“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, Dragon's Teeth

“Truly it seemed that a great people had gone mad; but it is a fact well known to alienists that you cannot convince a madman of his own condition, and only make him madder by trying.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“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, Dragon's Teeth

“Play your music, read your books, think your own thoughts, and never let yourselves be drawn into an argument! Not an altogether satisfactory way of life, but the only one possible in times when the world is changing so fast that parents and children may be a thousand years apart in their ideas and ideals.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“find out how to save the world from hatreds and delusions which are the root of wars.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“World War victims, depression victims, psychopaths, drug addicts, perverts, criminals—they all needed Adolf a little more than Adolf needed them, and he welded them into something more powerful than themselves.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“so, then it must be that the thinkers will be forever subject to the men of brute force, and Plato’s dream of a state ruled by philosophers will remain forever vain.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“men who understood the workers and how to fool them with glittering promises and then climb to power upon their shoulders.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“For two thousand years the Jews had been scattered over the old Continent like thistledown in the wind; and the most carefully tended family trees don’t always show what pollen has fallen upon them.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“Friendship is a delightful thing when you have had the good judgment to choose the right friends.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“A world conqueror had appeared in modern times. Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Genghis Khan, Napoleon—another such as these, appearing in the age of electricity, of rotary presses and radio, when nine men out of ten would have said it was impossible. A world conqueror has to be a man of few ideas, and those fixed; a peculiar combination of exactly the right qualities, both good and bad—iron determination, irresistible energy, and no scruples of any sort. He has to know what he wants, and permit no obstacle to stand in the way of his getting it. He has to understand the minds of other men, both foes and friends, and what greeds, fears, hates, jealousies will move them to action. He must understand the mass mind, the ideals or delusions which sway it; he must be enough of a fanatic to talk their language, though not enough to be controlled by it. He must believe in nothing but his own destiny, the glorified image of himself on the screen of history; whole races of mankind made over in his own image and according to his will. To accomplish that purpose he must be liar, thief, and murderer upon a world-wide scale; he must be ready without hesitation to commit every crime his own interest commands, whether upon individuals or nations.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“The two of them heartened each other, making bovine life a bit more tolerable.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“No easy matter to stick to the conviction that your point of view is right and that all the people about you are wrong. That is the way not merely with pioneers of thought, with heroes, saints, and martyrs, but also with lunatics and “nuts,” of whom there are millions in the world. When one of these “nuts” succeeds in persuading the greater part of a great nation that he is right, the five per cent have to stop and ask themselves: “How come?”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“Adolf Hitler taught that the masses did not think with their brains but with their blood; that is to say, they did not reason but were driven by instincts.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“The dream of every dictator was to get exclusive control of that colossal instrument, so that never again in all history would it be possible to answer back. Then what you said would become the truth and the only truth—no matter how false it might have been previously! He who could get and hold the radio became God.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“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. He had been applying it for thirteen years, ever since the accursed treaty had been signed, and now he was at the climax of his efforts. He and his lieutenants were holding hundreds of meetings every night, all over Germany, and it was like one meeting; the same speech, whether it was a newspaper print or cartoon or signboard or phonograph record. No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that. Imagine the worst possible about your enemies and then swear that you knew it, you had seen it, it was God’s truth and you were ready to stake your life upon it—shout this, bellow this, over and over, day after day, night after night. If one person states it, it is nonsense, but if ten thousand join in it becomes an indictment, and when ten million join in it becomes history. The Jews kill Christian children and use their blood as a part of their religious ritual! You refuse to believe it? But it is a well-known fact; it is called “ritual murder.” The Jews are in a conspiracy to destroy Christian civilization and rule the whole world. It has all been completely exposed in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the party has printed these, the Führer has guaranteed their authenticity, the great American millionaire Henry Ford has circulated them all over America. Everybody there knows that the charges are true, the whole world knows it—save only the Jew-lovers, the Jew-kissers, the filthy Jew-hirelings. Nieder mit den Juden!”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“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, Dragon's Teeth

“Good God!” exclaimed Raoul. “How much more will the people need to wake them up?”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“The Führer’s reply was to withdraw the German delegates from both the League of Nations and the Conference for Arms Limitation.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“Every organization which stood in his way he proceeded to break, one after another, with such speed and ruthlessness that it left the opposition dizzy. The”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“The history of Germany is becoming a melodrama,” wrote the Jewish financier. “In times to come people will refuse to believe it.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“All over Prussia Göring was replacing police chiefs with Nazis, and the Stormtroopers were now attending political meetings in force, stopping those in which the government was criticized.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“The Nazi movement had been made out of propaganda, and now it would cover Germany like an explosion.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“fanatic down, and the soup would be eaten cool.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“was lack of that living spirit of brotherhood and solidarity which had made it possible for Otto Braun, Social-Democratic Premier of the Prussian state, and Karl Severing, Minister of the Interior, to bow to the threats of monocled aristocrats, and slink off to their villas without making the least effort to rouse the people to defend their republic and the liberties it guaranteed them.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“They had the keenest realization of danger to the cause of freedom and social justice. They all wanted to do something; but first they had to agree what to do, and apparently they couldn’t; they talked and argued until they were exhausted.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“They would take advantage of an uprising to seize the reins themselves; they would turn upon their allies as they had done with Kerensky in Russia.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“for he seemed to have but one rule: to think of everything that ten thousand Württembergers could possibly want, and promise it to them, to be delivered on the day when they would elect the candidates”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“No matter whether it was true or not—for Adi meant literally his maxim that the bigger the falsehood, the easier to get it believed; people would say you wouldn’t dare make up a thing like that.”
― Upton Sinclair, Dragon's Teeth

“Reds. 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, Dragon's Teeth