Sinclair Lewis Quotes

Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.

Every compulsion based on the supposition of the legality of a particular thing is a tyranny.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.

America is the country where you can buy a lifetime supply of aspirin for one dollar and use it up in two weeks.

It is easier to buy a vote than to get a dollar.

Faith means not wanting to know what is true.

Everywhere in the world there are tensions – economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.

I’m very fond of doing what I’m not supposed to do.

The machine has had a pernicious effect upon virtue, pity, and love, and young men used to machines which induce inertia, and fear, are near impotent.

Fanaticism is the danger of the world. It always has been and has done untold harm. What is done in the name of God or religion, in fact, supersedes the authority of the deity.

The Democrat and Republican parties are alike essentially capitalist parties – and that is enough.

There are only two things people want in this world: to be comfortable and to be amused.

The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.

Sinclair Lewis Quotes part 2

The things that make people proud, as a rule, are worthy of no pride.

Progress is the process of replacing old problems with new ones.

A man usually falls in love with a woman who asks the kinds of questions he is able to answer.

The rich are the last persecuted minority.

The surest way to be alone is to get married.

So much of our lives is given to us by our occupations, and most occupations are painful.

Every man for himself – there is no other slogan more satisfactory and freeing.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, ‘The trouble with this country is…’

The best way to combat the video camera is to learn a little Shakespeare.

Everyone knows how to raise children except the people who have them.

Intellectuals are people who think they know more than they do.

The fascist of the future will be the anti-fascist.

It is often difficult to distinguish between the hardworking and the industrious.

Goodness is achieved not in a vacuum, but in the company of other men, attended by love.

Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast, the disk jockey is not allowed to talk.

There is always a reason for a pretty woman to be happy.

When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.

Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were very young.

Most of us can remember a time when a birthday – especially if it was one’s own – brightened the world as if a second sun has risen.

Advertising is the art of convincing people to spend money they don’t have for something they don’t need.

Man is a curious animal who always wants to know who kicked him.

People want more than anything else to be noticed and to be the center of attention.

The greatest menace to American liberty today comes from within.

The newest computer can merely compound, at speed, the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem, of what to say, and how to say it.

People must not do things for fun. We are not here for fun. There is no reference to fun in any Act of Parliament.

I am fascinated by the cold, precise, and winsomely humorous cynicism with which journalists of the 1920s chronicled a gaudy era.

It’s 4:30 in the morning, and I can’t sleep. It’s no use; you can’t help thinking back so far, and lately I have been thinking a long, long way back.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

The American upper-middle-class citizen is a composite of negatives.

The consumer, so it is said, is the king… each is a voter who uses his money as votes to get the things done that he wants done.

Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.