Sinclair Lewis
Pugnacity is a form of courage, but a very bad form.Collection: Courage
People will buy anything that is 'one to a customer.'Collection: Business
Whatever poet, orator or sage may say of it, old age is still old age.Collection: Age
When audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.Collection: Hope
What is love? It is the morning and the evening star.Collection: Morning
There are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.Collection: Humor
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.Collection: Patriotism
Winter is not a season, it's an occupation.Collection: Nature
Advertising is a valuable economic factor because it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if the goods are worthless.
Our American professors like their literature clear and cold and pure and very dead.
Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile.
He who has seen one cathedral ten times has seen something; he who has seen ten cathedrals once has seen but little; and he who has spent half an hour in each of a hundred cathedrals has seen nothing at all.
The middle class, that prisoner of the barbarian 20th century.
Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles oh, damn their measured merriment.
When fascism comes to the United States it will be wrapped in the American flag and will claim the name of 100-percent AmericanismCollection: Names
I am convinced that everything that is worth while in the world has been accomplished by the free, inquiring, critical spirit, and that the preservation of this spirit is more important than any social system whatsoever. But the men of ritual and the men of barbarism are capable of shutting up the men of science and silencing them forever.Collection: Men
Writers have a rare power not given to anyone else: we can bore people long after we are dead.Collection: Writing
When facism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.Collection: America
I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts.Collection: Energy
The trouble with this country is that there are too many people going about saying, "The trouble with this country is...."Collection: Funny
Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.Collection: Kings
You have more people that love you than you know.Collection: Love You
It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don't give a damn what you say, they're going to write.Collection: Real
Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.Collection: Friendship
Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.Collection: Love
Fascism will come to America wrapped in a flag.Collection: America
My objection to the church isn't that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too - think of how many are arrested for selling fake stock, for seducing 14-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder. An it isn't so much that the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires - though a lot of churches are that, too. My chief objection is that 99% of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly dull.Collection: Girl
Since dictating the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it.Collection: Race
The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.Collection: Life
There is no greater compliment to the Jews than the fact that the degree of their unpopularity is always the scientific measure of the cruelty and silliness of the regime under which they live.Collection: Facts
Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.Collection: Evil
You're so earnest about morality that I hate to think how essentially immoral you must be underneath.Collection: Hate
I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers... coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said that. We want our Utopia now — and we're going to try our hands at it.Collection: Tired
Men die, but the plutocracy is immortal; and it is necessary that fresh generations should be trained to its service.Collection: Men
Curiously, neither God nor the devil may wear modern dress, but must retain Grecian vestments.Collection: Devil
Life is hard and astonishingly complicated.... No one great reform will make it easy. Most of us who work -- or want to work -- will always have trouble or discontent. So we must learn to be calm, and train all our faculties, and make others happy.Collection: Make Others Happy
NOW is a fact that cannot be dodged.Collection: Facts
It isn't what you earn but how spend it that fixes your class.Collection: Class
In everything was the spirit of children's play - not the rule-ridden, time-killing play of adults that is a preparation for death, but the busy and credulous play of children that is a preparation for life.Collection: Children
It is, I think, an error to believe that there is any need of religion to make life seem worth living.Collection: Atheist
Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.Collection: War
A man takes a drink, the drink takes another, and the drink takes the man.Collection: Food
People will buy anything that is one to a customer.Collection: Money
Sleep with me sleep with my dogs-Collection: Dog
It's one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.Collection: America
People read fiction for emotion-not informationCollection: People
What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament!Collection: Love
The Maker of the universe with stars a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on Sunday afternoon.Collection: Baseball
Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not needed by youth.Collection: Tragedy
I love America, but I don't like it.Collection: America