01UndatedIf a queen comes to America, crowds fill the station squares, and attendant British journalists rejoice, 'You see: the American Cousins are as respectful to Royalty as we are.'But the Americans have read of queens since babyhood. they want to see one queen, once, and if another came to town next week, with twice as handsome a crown, she would not draw more than two small boys and an Anglophile.Americans want to see one movie star, one giraffe, one jet plance, one murder, but only one. They run up a skyscraper or the fame of generals and evangelists and playwrights in one week and tear them all down in an hour, and the mark of excellence everywhere is 'under new management'.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
02UndatedAnd why, she began to ask, did she rage against individuals? Not individuals but institutions are the enemies, and they most afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them. They insinuate their tyranny under a hundred guises and pompous names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race; and the only defense against them, Carol beheld, was unembittered laughter.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
03UndatedHe was afraid that the world struggle today was not of Communism against Fascism, but of tolerance against the bigotry that was preached equally by Communism and Fascism. But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word “Fascism” and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty. For they were thieves not only of wages but of honor. To their purpose they could quote not only Scripture but Jefferson.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
05UndatedThe game (baseball)was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called “patriotism” and “love of sport.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
08UndatedWhen audiences come to see us authors lecture, it is largely in the hope that we'll be funnier to look at than to read.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
09UndatedThere are two insults no human being will endure: that he has no sense of humor, and that he has never known trouble.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
11UndatedIntellectually I know that America is no better than any other country emotionally I know she is better than every other country.Sinclair Lewis / quote ↗
