It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
They were trying to save their souls- and who but a fool could fail to see that all that was the matter with their souls was that they had not been able to get a decent existence for their bodies?
The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.
It appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.
All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If he does not, some one else will.
The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.
Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.
You don’t have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn’t like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I’ve been trying to change it ever since.
The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of art for art’s sake than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore – and then there will be time enough for art.
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.
There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
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.
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.