Oil! Quotes

“Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“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, Oil!

“So the laws of good driving forbade you to go off the magic ribbon except in extreme emergencies. You were ethically entitled to several inches of margin at the right-hand edge; and the man approaching you was entitled to an equal number of inches; which left a remainder of inches between the two projectiles as they shot by. It sounds risky as one tells it, but the heavens are run on the basis of similar calculations, and while collisions do happen, they leave time enough in between for universes to be formed, and successful careers conducted by men of affairs.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“We have an arrangement with our bank; the bank does not sell soup, and we do not cash checks.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Don't complain about our coffee; someday you may be old and weak yourself.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“You mustn’t fool yourself with the idea that you could hire experts to attend to things; for how could you know that a man was an expert, unless you knew as much as he did? Some day your foreman might drop dead, or some other fellow would buy him away from you, and then where would you be? Be your own expert, said Dad!”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“The wobblies had a song about it in their jungles: “We go to work to get the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work to get the cash to buy the food to get the strength to go to work—” and so on,”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Such was the result of an oil king’s resolve to manufacture culture wholesale, by executive order!”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“In truth the land of the pilgrim’s pride no longer existed; in its place was the land of the millionaire’s glory.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Conversation at this dinner-party, as at most dinner-parties in America at that time, resembled a walk along the edge of a slippery ditch. Sooner or later you were bound to slide in, and after that you could not get out, but finished your walk in the ditch.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“You could not help being impressed by so much activity,
even though you knew it was the activity of Satan.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“It was pleasant to have a lot of money; but you must set up a skeleton at the feast, and while you quaffed the wine of success, you must hear a voice behind you whispering, “Memento mori!”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“The ranchman drove to town in a nationally advertised auto, pressing the accelerator with a nationally advertised shoe; in front of the drug-store he found a display of nationally advertised magazines, containing all the nationally advertised advertisements of the nationally advertised articles he would take back to the ranch.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“The father kept two compartments in his mind, one for things that were right, and the other for things that existed, and which you had to allow to exist, and to defend, in a queer, half-hearted, but stubborn way. But here was this new phenomenon, a boy’s mind which was all one compartment; things ought to be right, and if they were not right, you ought to make them right, or else what was the use of having any right—you were only fooling yourself about it.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“All that a teacher had to do was to let these fellows ask questions, and quickly the whole group would be wandering in a maze, demoralized by what the Japanese government in its control of education describes as “dangerous thoughts.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“You could never be sure how much of it was acting, for he was sly as the devil, and not above using his arts on those he loved.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“such fines ought to go to the state”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“A lot of us are going to jail, and a lot more are going to die. The one thing we must be sure of is that we help to awaken the slaves.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Men and women are not bodies only, and cannot be satisfied with delights of the body only. Men and women are minds, and have to have harmony of ideas. Can they be bored with each other’s ideas, and still be just as much in love? Men and women are characters, and these characters lead to actions—and what if they lead to different actions? What if the man wants to read a book, while the woman wants to go to a dance?”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“We’re going to have roast spring lamb for dinner, but you didn’t consider it necessary to visit the slaughter-house.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“It’s hard to realize how ignorant people can be, when they read nothing but American newspapers and magazines.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“they were sober, church-going people, the sort who formed the Ku Klux Klan, and punished fornications and adulteries by tarring and feathering and riding on a rail.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“He was near enough to see the imp of mischief dancing in her black eyes. “Young woman,” he said, “I give you fair notice. I have been in this water an hour, and I am cold. I was on my way out.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“but in this new pagan civilization women were so startled by an encounter with chastity, it struck them as something colossal, superhuman.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“he realized what Dad meant when he compared the oil-game to heaven, where many are called and few are chosen.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Any boy will tell you that this is glorious. Whoopee! you bet! Sailing along up there close to the clouds, with an engine full of power, magically harnessed, subject to the faintest pressure from the ball of your foot. The power of ninety horses—think of that! Suppose you had had ninety horses out there in front of you, forty-five pairs in a long line, galloping around the side of a mountain, wouldn’t that make your pulses jump? And this magic ribbon of concrete laid out for you, winding here and there, feeling its way upward with hardly a variation of grade, taking off the shoulder of a mountain, cutting straight through the apex of another, diving into the black belly of a third; twisting, turning, tilting inward on the outside curves, tilting outward on the inside curves, so that you were always balanced, always safe—and with a white-painted line marking the centre, so that you always knew exactly where you had a right to be—what magic had done all this?”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“They respected this “old man,” because he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also they liked him, because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he was simple and unpretentious—when the work was crowded, you would have him eating his beans and coffee on a stool in the “eats” joint alongside you. He”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“- Мечта о любви, о настоящей искренней любви никогда не умирает в душе женщины. Жизнь делает иногда женщин циничными, заставляет их говорить, что они не верят в любовь, но это только слова. В глубине души они глубоко страдают, надеются и ждут, потому что для них любовь - самое важное в жизни.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!

“Чем больше вы делаете людям добра, тем меньше они вас ценят, считая, что вы обязаны это им делать.”
― Upton Sinclair, Oil!