text:
User:MAustin

= MAUSTIN =

Current Academics
A current student in second year of studies in Joint Economics (Macroeconomics) and Political Science at the University of Waterloo based in Waterloo, Ontario Canada.

Development
Born in September of 1984 to the Nintendo generation, his schooling developed around science and continued until high school where it was traded for interest into investments, financing and business management.

Business
An active member of the Junior Achievement program in high school for three years, he held the positions of VP of Administration, and VP of Finance for two terms. This in turn gave him the knowledge to run two successful companies, one in computer retail and repair, and the other in business consultation. Both businesses would be closed (one at a profit, the other at a loss)

Canadian Service
Now a member of the Land Force Reserve in the Canadian Forces, employed as a combat engineer with the 31 Combat Engineer Regiment (the "Elgin’s"), he spends most of his time on Thursdays and the weekends training with the regiment on multiple courses offered by the military.

Leisure
In spare time, great focus is placed on study of historical fiction as well as current issues involving Canadian politics, the Canadian economy and international business.

Political Fiction:
Animal Farm - George Orwell

Science Fiction:
Foundation - Issac Asimov (The Foundation Series) Rendezvous with Rama - Arthur C. Clarke (The Rama Series) Analog Science Fiction and Fact (Formerly Astounding Science-Fiction)

Distopia:
1984 - George Orwell Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Historical fiction:
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Nihilism/Utilitarianism vs. Fundamental Orthodoxy) All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User:MAustin


text:
Talk:Edmund Burke

Possible misquotation.
Proper quotation may read: "The only thing needed for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"

 * This very extensively used statement may be a paraphrase of some of Burke's ideas, but he is not known to have ever declared it. An extraordinary number of variations exist, all without any definite original source. See some of the admirable research done on this matter at these two links: Burkequote & Burkequote2. I intend to do some work on this page in the next few hours, and will add some more quotes, including more that are attributed to him. ~ Kalki 11:31, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * That's the second longest list I've ever seen; the other being "700 Hobo Names" in John Hodgman's book. 152.23.196.162 08:16, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems like it may have arisen out of confusion / mixing with the Thomas Jefferson quote:
 * "All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."

Simple: All a bad person needs to become a leader is for the good people to do nothing.

Do we really need to list all the variations? Why not just say that these variations include common substitutions, like:
 * substitution of "for good men to do nothing" in place of "that good men do nothing".
 * substitution of "for evil to triumph" in place of "for the triumph of evil".
 * substitution of "succeed", "prosper", or "win in the world" in place of "triumph".
 * addition of qualifiers such as "some good men", "a few good men", "enough good men", or "all good men", in place of "good men"
 * substitution of phrases like "All that is essential", "All that is needed", "All that is required", or "All that it takes" in place of "All that is necessary".
 * substitution of "the forces of evil" in place of "evil".
 * substitution of "The only thing" in place of "All", or in place of "All that is".
 * the addition of "and women" after "men", sometimes in brackets or as a parenthetical.
 * rearrangement of clauses so that the phrase begins with "For evil to triumph".

BD2412 T 20:26, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

 * The example of variants this statement provides is the most extensive on wikiquote, but I believe we should retain them — as a means of providing search engine hits for people searching for any of these variants, and to emphasize that this is indeed most likely a misattribution, despite the pervasive variants attributed to Burke. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 21:01, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
 * There is no doubt it is a very popular saying with numerous variants, but this list does seem excessive. The pair of cited essays survey variants found on the www, but I wonder how many are citable to print attributions. When debunking misattributions and variants, I think it is valuable to note errors that circulate in sources that could reasonably be considered reliable. I think it is less valuable to note every mistake or variation found on the web, for it seems the only thing that contains more misinformation than the web today is the web tomorrow. We might also consider whether copying such an extensive list from someone else's research could be a copyright violation. If I were inclined to spend time researching this, I would try to find citations for attributions in notable works or by prominent persons, and discard variants for which such citations are unavailable. ~ Ningauble 15:19, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

 * It's better to cite variations of this popular quotation and to continue work researching it than to delete it and condemn work on it. Richardc020 (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

 * I purchased the complete set of Burke's works several years ago, primarily to see if I can find that popular quote attributed to him. The closest that I can find, which you can find in Google Books*, is "When bad men combine, the good must associate..." 2600:1012:b127:23b4:1917:4c2:18fa:37fa (talk) 23:40, 25 December 2017 (edit) (undo)

Man is not a finished creation
http://books.google.com/books?hl=de&q=%22Religion+is+essentially+the+art%22&btnG=Nach+B%C3%BCchern+suchen It seems the quote comes from India instead of from Burke --Histo 15:23, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Laughter of the gods

 * Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
 * Preface to Brissot's Address (1794)

Can someone provide the precise location within the preface to Brissot's Address where this quote is located? I cannot find it in online texts of that work. The quote is also commonly attributed to Albert Einstein. Coleopterous 01:56, 23 January 2010 (UTC)

I can confirm that this quote is not in the Preface to Brissot's Address. Not sure why there is a discrepancy on its origin, or if the real author is even known to begin with. Empyrian 08:22, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

 * I can find no attribution of this to Burke in an any Google Book searches — but many to Einstein, and have located a definite citation to where it originated among Einstein's writings. I will thus remove it from the page, rather than placing it in a Misattributed section, and update the Einstein page as well. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 09:23, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to Edmund Burke. --Antiquary 19:11, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

 * By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

 * If we have equity, wisdom, and justice, it will belong to this country; if we have it not, it will not belong to this country.
 * On whether America should belong to Britain

 * Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair.

 * No one could make a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.

 * Religion is essentially the art and the theory of the remaking of man. Man is not a finished creation.

 * To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
 * Variant: Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

 * What ever disunites man from God also disunites man from man.

Turn over a new leaf.
While Burke may have used this phrase, no one should think that he's the originator of it, which begs the question of why this is even listed here as a famous "quote". From what other sites are telling me, this expression has been around in one form or another since some time in the 16th century.

Per the “Dictionary of Cliches” editor Eric Partridge advises that the phrase dates from 1597. (Based on anecdote here: http://www.pauahtun.org/Software/worldcal.html )

This site concurs: "...turn over a new leaf dates from the late 16th century." ( http://www.takeourword.com/Issue070.html )

Though I can't seem to pull it up myself, Google lists this content on this page: "Recorded from the late 16th century, it now always means to alter for the better, ..." ( http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/leaf.aspx )

The only dissenting opionion I found was this site which gives an even earlier date: "The earlier form of the expression, which originates from the first half of the 16th century, is simply 'turn the leaf' and was rather clearer." ( http://users.tinyonline.co.uk/gswithenbank/sayingst.htm ) 65.0.200.209 09:15, 12 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The Oxford English Dictionary confirms that "turn over a new leaf" is known from 1597, with similar forms coming slightly earlier. Here are the first usages they cite:
 * 1577-87 HOLINSHED Chron. I. 21/2 He must turne the leafe, and take out a new lesson, by changing his former trade of liuing into better. 1581 MULCASTER Positions xxxvii. (1887) 148 The state is now altered,..the preferment that way hath turned a new leafe. 1597 BEARD Theatre God's Judgem. (1631) 92 But as soone as he was exalted to honor, he turned ouer a new leafe, and began..furiously to afflict..the..faithfull seruants of Christ.
 * I'll remove the quote from the Edmund Burke page since there really seems no good reason for it to be there. --Antiquary 09:43, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
From WikiAnswers - Edmund Burke (1729-1797) statement, "Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." - http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Who_said_Those_who_ignore_history_are_bound_to_repeat_it Does anyone know the source, not able to find it. thanks Petersam 02:21, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I just reviewed all the texts available here on Project Gutenberg, and none of the occurrences of the word "repeat" (or related words such as repeated, repeatedly, etc.) match something like this quote. It's possible this is a misquote based on the Santayana quote here, or that there is a similar Burke quote which does not use the word "repeat" in it, or that the Burke text that contains the quote is not on Gutenberg. My guess is a Santayana mixup, but confirmation would be great. -- Tarheelcoxn 22:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Just passing through and realize this page may be too old for anyone to be checking. But here's a longer quote from Burke, Reflections which may be a seed for the misquoting:
 * "We do not draw the moral lessons we might from history. On the contrary, without care it may be used to vitiate our minds and to destroy our happiness. In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from the past errors and infirmities of mankind. It may, in the perversion, serve for a magazine, furnishing offensive and defensive weapons for parties in church and state, and supplying the means of keeping alive, or reviving, dissensions and animosities, and adding fuel to civil fury." Para 242
 * and
 * "But history in the nineteenth century, better understood, and better employed, will, I trust, teach a civilized posterity to abhor the misdeeds of both these barbarous ages. It will teach future priests and magistrates not to retaliate upon the speculative and inactive atheists of future times, the enormities committed by the present practical zealots and furious fanatics of that wretched error, which, in its quiescent state, is more than punished, whenever it is embraced. It will teach posterity not to make war upon either religion or philosophy, for the abuse which the hypocrites of both have made of the two most valuable blessings conferred upon us by the bounty of the universal Patron, who in all things eminently favours and protects the race of man." para 244
 * From here: https://www.bartleby.com/24/3/10.html#txt2 73.243.109.152 22:07, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
 * Can anyone provide a citation? There are hundreds of references to the Burke quote on the web, but no indication of where it comes from. The Wikipedia article on George Santayana indicates that his quote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (Life of Reason, Vol. 1) is based on Burke's earlier quote. It would be nice to have the correct attribution, but not without a proper citation. --- wbforbes 20:02, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

According to Barlett's Familiar Quotations, Burke said "People will not look forward to prosperity who never look backward to their ancestors." From Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790.

A link to this quote from Burke can be found here: https://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/burke1790part1.pdf part 1, page 18, second paragraph, which starts: "This policy appears to me to be the result of profound reflection, or  rather  the  happy  effect  of..." (accessed 2018-09)

title: Talk:Edmund Burke


text:
Con Air

Con Air is a 1997 American action film about a U.S. Marshals Service plane transporting prisoners to a new "Super Max" prison is taken over by the inmates, trapping a paroled former Army Ranger on board.
 * Directed by Simon West. Written by Scott Rosenberg
 * Starring Nicholas Cage, John Malkovich, and John Cusack.

They were deadly on the ground. Now they have wings.

Cameron Poe

 * They somehow managed to get every freak and creep in the universe on this one plane, and then somehow managed to let them take it over, and then they somehow managed to stick us right smack in the middle.
 * Put the bunny back in the box.

U.S. Marshal Vince Larkin

 * [on Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom] This one's done it all. Kidnapping, robbery, murder, extortion. His name is Cyrus Grissom, AKA "Cyrus the Virus." Thirty-nine years old, 25 of them spent in our institutions. But he's bettered himself inside. Earned two degrees, including his juris doctorate. He's also killed 11 fellow inmates, incited three riots, and escaped twice. Likes to brag that he's killed more men than cancer. Cyrus is a poster child for the criminally insane. He's a true product of the system.

Garland Greene

 * [His first spoken words in the movie; regarding Billy Bedlam] He's a font of misplaced rage. Name your cliche: Mother held him too much or not enough, last picked at kickball, late night sneaky uncle, whatever. Now, he gets so angry, moments of levity actually cause him pain, gives him headaches. Happiness, for that gentleman, hurts.
 * [as the convicts dance to "Sweet Home Alabama"] Define irony: a bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.

Dialogue

 * Guard Falzon: Well, welcome aboard. My, my; as I look around I see a lot of celebrities among us. I see eleven Current Affairs, two Hard Copies and a genuine Geraldo interviewee, [gestures at Diamond Dog] but I gotta tell you gentlemen, none of this impresses me. Because we have rules on this aircraft and they're going to be enforced. It's a lot like kindergarten. You'll keep your hands to yourself, keep the decibel level down and, if any of you should feel the need to scream, spit, or bite, you get the treatment.
 * Inmate: [spits at Falzon's feet] Fuck you, pig.
 * Guard Falzon: [to another guard] Gag and bag this Nazi muffin. [strikes inmate before guards gag him and place a mesh bag over his head] You see, this kind of thing puts me in a foul mood. These rules will be enforced because I can't have trouble. If any of you so much as pass gas in my general direction, upsetting my delicate nasal passages, your testicles will become my personal property. That's pretty clear. Good.

 * Cyrus the Virus: [holding the pilot at gunpoint] Say there was a disturbance, but you've got it under control. Say it, or I will kill you.
 * Pilot: Without me, you got nobody to fly the plane.
 * Cyrus: I never think that far ahead.

 * Johnny "Johnny 23" Baca: Shit, that's Garland Greene, man.
 * Cameron Poe: The Marietta Mangler.
 * Mike "Baby O" O'Dell: That skinny little man butchered thirty-some people up and down the eastern seaboard. They say the way he killed those people makes the Manson Family look like The Partridge Family!
 * Poe: Well...he's on the right flight.

 * Cyrus: Good, now here are the rules, I'm going to ask a question and then you will ask a question.
 * Larkin: Okay... What's your question?
 * Cyrus: In Carson City, your boys were onto us; how?
 * Malloy: One of the guards- [Larkin cuts him off]
 * Larkin: One of the guards faked a heart attack and we had to remove his restraints, okay?
 * Cyrus: Alright, now what's your question?
 * Larkin: Where are you going with my plane, Cyrus?
 * Cyrus: We're going to Disneyland.
 * Larkin: You're lying, Cyrus.
 * Cyrus: So are you, Vince. [mocks him by singsong] Ohh... nothing makes me sadder than the agent lost his bladder in the... aaaiirrrplane. [Larkin throws the headset he's using]

 * [Garland Greene sees Poe come up after he kills Billy Bedlam in the cargo hold]
 * Garland Greene: Two went down. One came up.
 * Poe: Wasn't my fault.
 * Garland: Well, you don't have to tell me. Most murders are crimes of necessity rather than desire. But the great ones... Dahmer, Gacy, Bundy... they did it because it excited them.
 * Poe: Don't you... I got nothing in common with them — with you! Don't you talk to me! They were insane!
 * Garland: Now you're talking semantics. What if I told you insane was working a 50-hour week for 50 years, at the end of which they tell you to piss off. Ending up in some retirement village, hoping to die rather than suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time. Wouldn't you consider that to be insane?
 * Poe: Murdering 30 people, semantics or not, is insane.
 * Garland: [smiles] One girl, I drove through three states wearing her head as a hat.
 * Poe: It's my daughter's birthday, so please feel free not to share everything with me.

 * [the cons start digging out the Jailbird]
 * Cyrus the Virus: Thanks, Poe. You've proven to be a most useful mammal.
 * Cameron Poe: "Many hands make light work." My daddy taught me that.
 * Cyrus: You know what my daddy taught me?
 * Poe: What's that?
 * Cyrus: Nothin'.
 * Poe: Self-educated man.

 * [Cyrus has made a map in the dirt using various bits of junk to represent buildings at Lerner Airfield]
 * Cyrus: Considering my audience, I'm gonna make this very quick and very simple. [points with a stick] This is the boneyard. This is the hangar. This is our plane.
 * Viking: What's that? [points at a rock]
 * Cyrus: That's a rock.
 * Viking: [looks embarrassed] Okay.
 * Cyrus: The convoy will enter the boneyard here. Initially, we take out the first car [flicks off forward Coke can], then we take out the [hits can] last, creating a trap... an air-tight cage filled with lots and lots of dead people. Nathan, get everybody in position, yeah? [cons mobilize] And bring me those propane tanks!

Taglines

 * One wrong flight can ruin your whole day.
 * Get Ready to Fly.
 * Buckle Up!
 * They were deadly on the ground. Now they have wings.
 * Welcome to Con Air.

Cast

 * Nicholas Cage - Cameron Poe
 * John Malkovich - Cyrus "Cyrus the Virus" Grissom
 * Ving Rhames - Nathan "Diamond Dog" Jones
 * Steve Buscemi - Garland "The Marietta Mangler" Greene
 * John Cusack - Vince Larkin
 * Mykelti Williamson - Mike "Baby O" O'Dell
 * Dave Chappelle - Joe "Pinball" Parker
 * Colm Meaney - Duncan Malloy

title: Con Air


text:
User talk:LGagnon

Great session of work adding all the category links last night. I noticed it going on, but didn't want to break your stride by interrupting you with any comments on it. I know how tedious such sessions can be, and how hard to resume, once distracted from them. We might be approaching a point where many of the "List of ____" pages will be entirely obsolete. ~ Kalki 11:49, 26 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * I've noticed you've done some work relating to Films, so I am wondering if you wouldn't mind check out our discussion regarding Templates (a standard to format Movies and TV shows) at this Template discussion link We are looking forward to inputs and contributions PEACE RoboAction 06:34, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hi, Welcome back to Wikiquote, and thank you for your submission Nietzsche related submission! --Aphaia 15:42, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Signature problems
I was trying to make an edit to a section in Kalki's talk page, but my section edits kept giving me the wrong section. I traced the problem to your signature, which looks like the following (taken from Talk:Falling Down):

 * [[User talk:LGagnon|LGagnon]] 03:03, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It appears that you're trying to create links to both your user and talk pages, but you are using a nested link, which not only doesn't appear to work consistently, but it has the tendency to "eat" the paragraph that follows it when displayed. (Check out old "Category talk:Foreign films" to see how my posting isn't displayed [leaving only my signature] and old "User talk:Kalki" to see how the "Wikimedia Commons" section header completely disappears from display. Compare them to the current versions where the missing text is displayed and notice that the only difference is your signature.)

I checked this in Firefox 1.0.2, Opera 7.23, and Internet Explorer 6.0 to make sure it wasn't a browser artifact. I think the problem is that you can't safely nest links.

I changed your signatures on Kalki's page and Category talk:Foreign films to a more convention form that still provides both links. Ordinarily, I don't touch anyone else's postings, let alone their signatures, but I needed to talk to Kalki, and I wanted my FF comment to display. (I also found the problem signature on Talk:Falling Down, Talk:List of people by name, and Category talk:Political Leaders, but I leave those for you to fix if you wish.) I apologize if you feel I've been too bold. — Jeff Q (talk) 02:56, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I've very sorry about the problems with my sig. Apperantly I didn't have the "raw signatures" box checked off, which was causing the problem. It should be solved now. -- LGagnon 04:06, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

 * I've since learned that it probably wasn't your fault. BugZilla bug 1905 seems to have messed up wiki markup like yours. It's apparently been fixed now. Sorry to trouble you. — Jeff Q (talk) 07:20, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sysop
Hi, LGagnon, would you like to consider being more involved into Wikiquote maintenance task? You are an active user here and have an experience on Wiki editing. Our project is now rapidly growing and we need more hands. If you would like to join our sysop team, I feel it great. --Aphaia 18:08, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

title: User talk:LGagnon


text:
Digimon

 is a Japanese media franchise encompassing virtual pet toys, anime, manga, video games, films and a trading card game.

TV shows

 * Digimon Adventure
 * Digimon Tamers
 * Digimon Frontier
 * Digimon Fusion

Film

 * Digimon: The Movie

title: Digimon


text:
The Day After Tomorrow

The Day After Tomorrow is a 2004 film about a climatologist who tries to figure out a way to save the world from abrupt global warming. He must also get to his young son in New York, which is being taken over by a new Ice Age.
 * Written and directed by Roland Emmerich.

Where Will You Be? (taglines)

Jack Hall

 * [in deleted scene, when asked by Jason Evans what will happen to humanity] Well, mankind survived the last Ice Age. We are certainly capable of surviving this one. The only question is, will we learn from our mistakes? I sure as hell would like a chance to learn from mine.

Vice-President Raymond Becker

 * [Deleted scene; upon learning the Mexicans have closed the US-Mexico border to Americans crossing over, suggesting military action to force an opening] What about them? America is built on land stolen from the Indians, so is Mexico. The only claim nations have on the land they hold is force.

 * [addressing as President] These past few weeks have left us all with a profound sense of humility in the face of nature's destructive power. For years, we operated under the belief that we could continue consuming our planet's natural resources, without consequence. We were wrong. I was wrong. The fact that my first address to you comes from a consulate on foreign soil is a testament to our changed reality. Not only Americans, but people all around the globe have become guests in the nations we once called 'the Third World'. In our time of need, they have taken us in and sheltered us, and I am deeply grateful for their hospitality. ... For days now, we have despaired about the fate of the people who are trapped in the North. Today, there is cause for hope. Only a few hours ago, I received word that a small group of people survived in New York City, against all odds and in the face of tremendous adversity. I've ordered an immediate search-and-rescue mission to bring them home - and to look for more survivors.

Dialogue

 * [Jack is speaking at a global warming convention in New Delhi]
 * Vice-President Raymond Becker: And who's going to pay the price of the Kyoto accord? It would cost the world's economy hundreds of billions of dollars.
 * Hall: With all due respect, Mr. Vice-President, the cost of doing nothing could be even higher. Our climate is fragile. At the rate we're burning fossil fuels and polluting the environment, the ice caps will soon disappear.
 * Becker: Professor, uh, Hall, our economy is every bit as fragile as the environment. Perhaps you should keep that in mind before making sensationalist claims.
 * Hall: Well, the last chunk of ice that broke off was about the size of the state of Rhode Island. Some people might call that pretty sensational. [Attendees chuckle]

 * Terry Rapson: This is very odd. There's a buoy here registering a thirteen-degree drop in ocean temperature.
 * Simon: Oh, yeah, that's right. That buoy malfunctioned the other day. I'll put a call in, see if there are any ships near George's Bank to get it.
 * Rapson: This buoy isn't in George's Bank. It's just off Greenland.
 * Simon: It is? [zooms the map out to show both buoys flashing] What are the odds of two buoys failing?
 * Rapson: Remote. [A third one in a different area begins flashing] Make that three.

 * [Gomez has just introduced Jack Hall to meteorologist Janet Tokada, and they see people gathering around the TVs]
 * Thomas "Tom" Gomez: Booker! What's going on, here?
 * Booker: They just issued a tornado warning in Los Angeles. [Gomez, Jack and Janet head down to the TVs to get a look]
 * FOX Anchorman: Breaking news as we prepare to go live to Los Angeles: mixed reports of some extreme weather occuring in the area.
 * Booker: Report just came in.
 * FOX Anchorman: All right, we're going to our FOX affiliate in Los Angeles.
 * [Cuts to weather chopper pilot Bart, with four tornadoes on the horizon]
 * FOX Anchorwoman: We have live coverage now from our FOX 11 chopper. Are you there, Bart?
 * Bart: Yes, I'm here. These tornadoes are forming so fast... [describes events] Oh, oh my God! Lisa, are you getting this on camera? This tornado just erased the Hollywood Sign! The Hollywood sign is gone; it's just shredded!
 * [The helicopter flies into the downtown area, near the Capital Records Building]
 * FOX Anchorwoman: Bart, what can you see, is anyone hurt?
 * Bart: I wouldn't be surprised, there is so much damage down there; and there are people down there, taking pictures! [cuts to the weather anchor yelling over the wind at two people who are recording one of the tornadoes advancing at him]

 * Terry Rapson: [Over the phone] What I'm about to tell you is supposed to be confidential. Several hours ago, three helicopters went down over Scotland. They crashed because the fuel in their lines froze.
 * Jack Hall: At what temperature does-
 * Rapson: -150° Fahrenheit. I mean, we had to look it up! The temperature dropped phenomenally fast! On the ground, people froze before they could get out of their cars!
 * Hall: Can you get me a satellite picture of Scotland two hours ago?
 * Janet: Yeah.
 * Rapson: We've got mountains of data, but nowhere near enough computer power to analyze it. Can you help us?
 * Hall: Send us what you've got, we'll do our best.
 * Rapson: Thanks, Jack. Bye for now. [hangs up]
 * Janet: This is Scotland at the time the temperature dropped.
 * [they see the image, which only displays hurricane-shaped cloud cover.]
 * Hall: This thing looks just like a hurricane.
 * Janet: Only hurricanes don't form over land.

 * Jack Hall: Professor, It's time you got out of there.
 * Terry Rapson: I'm afraid that time has come and gone, my friend.
 * Hall: [Pause] What can we do?
 * Rapson: Save as many as you can.

 * [Jack Hall has proposed evacuating only about half of the US due to time constraints]
 * General Pierce: We use the same approach with triage on the battlefield. Sometimes, it's necessary to make difficult choices.
 * Vice-President Becker: I don't accept that abandoning half the country is necessary!
 * Tom Gomez: Maybe if you would have listened to him sooner, it wouldn't be.
 * Becker: Oh, bullshit. It's easy for him to suggest this plan; he's safely here in Washington!
 * Tom: His son is in Manhattan. [Long pause] I just thought you should know that before you start questioning his motives.

 * [Rapson and his colleagues have run out of fuel to power the generator]
 * Dennis: Sorry mates, but we've just about run out of petrol.
 * Simon: Hey. [grabs a bottle of Scotch] Is there any chance that it will run on this?
 * Terry Rapson: Are you mad? That's a 12-year-old Scotch! [Simon pours the scotch into three glasses]
 * Simon: Gentlemen. To England.
 * Rapson: To Mankind.
 * Dennis: To Manchester United! [They drink]
 * Simon: [remembers his infant son] I just ... I just wish I could have seen him grow up, you know?
 * Rapson: The important thing is that he will grow up. [The last of the petroleum fuel burns out, and the power fails]
 * Dennis: [softly] Amen.

 * [The refugees at the New York Public Library are burning books to stay warm, but Elsa notices Jeremy holding something]
 * Elsa: What have you got there?
 * Jeremy: A Gutenberg Bible. It was in the rare books room.
 * Elsa: You think God's gonna save you?
 * Jeremy: No, I don't believe in God.
 * Elsa: You're holding onto that Bible pretty tight.
 * Jeremy: I'm protecting it. [glares at Sam] This Bible is the first book ever printed. It represents the dawn of the Age of Reason. As far as I'm concerned, the written word is mankind's greatest achievement. You can laugh. But if Western civilization is finished, I'm gonna save at least one little piece of it.

Taglines

 * Where Will You Be?
 * 10,000 Years Ago, One Storm Changed The Face Of Our Planet. On May 28, It Will Happen Again.
 * Nature Has Spoken.
 * This Year, A Sweater Won't Do.
 * Whoever Said "Tomorrow Is Another Day"...Didn't Check The Weather.

Cast

 * Dennis Quaid - Jack Hall
 * Jake Gyllenhaal - Sam Hall
 * Emmy Rossum - Laura Chapman
 * Dash Mihok - Jason Evans
 * Jay Sanders - Frank Harris
 * Sela Ward - Dr. Lucy Hall
 * Nestor Serrano - Thomas "Tom" Gomez
 * Austin Nichols - J.D.
 * Arjay Smith - Brian Parks
 * Ian Holm - Terry Rapson
 * Kennth Welsh - Vice President Becker

title: The Day After Tomorrow


text:
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (10 April 1857 – 13 March 1939) was a French philosopher, sociologist and anthropologist.

Quotes

 * The primitive mentality is a condition of the human mind, and not a stage in its historical development.
 * Quoted in François-Bernard Mâche (1983, 1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion (Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion, trans. Susan Delaney). Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3718653214.

Quotes about Lucien Lévy-Bruhl

 * I very much believe in the influence of magic and the subconscious on the literary process...I think that magic has to do with the subconscious, much as the ancient sorcerers believed. The identification of man with his material surroundings and his active participation in that world are detailed in the books of Carlos Castaneda, for example, as well as, on a different level, with the books of sociologists like Lévy-Bruhl and Ernest Cassirer, or Lévi-Strauss. The magical identification has a lot to do with literature, this alternate way of viewing the world.
 * Rosario Ferré Interviews with Latin American Writers by Gazarian Gautier (1988)

title: Lucien Lévy-Bruhl


text:
François-Bernard Mâche

François-Bernard Mâche (born April 4, 1935, Clermont-Ferrand) is a French composer of contemporary music.

Quotes

 * Myth does not set out to give lessons in natural science any more than in morals or sociology.
 * Mâche, François-Bernard (1983, 1992). Music, Myth and Nature, or The Dolphins of Arion (Musique, mythe, nature, ou les Dauphins d'Arion, trans. Susan Delaney). Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3718653214.

 * Myth therefore seems to choose history, rather than be chosen by it.
 * Music, Myth and Nature, p. 21

title: François-Bernard Mâche


text:
Ted Pappas

Ted Pappas is the current executive editor of Encyclopedia Britannica, and a leading critic of Wikipedia.

Quotes

 * The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection, that premise is completely unproven…with many of the pieces you don't know who it's written by, and who the administrators are…one of the administrators overseeing the political coverage openly encourages people to vote for John Kerry…30,000 articles were created by a bot [an automated program that goes round causing havoc]…hyperlinks, bulletpoints and cut-and-paste press releases do not an encyclopedia entry make.
 * Who knows?", The Guardian, Tuesday, October 26, 2004.

title: Ted Pappas


text:
Glengarry Glen Ross (film)

Glengarry Glen Ross is a 1992 film that is an examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate sales office.
 * Directed by James Foley and written by David Mamet, based on his play of the same name.

A Story For Everyone Who Works For A Living. Taglines

Richard "Ricky" Roma

 * I subscribe to the law of contrary public opinion: if everyone thinks one thing, then I say, bet the other way.
 * I've been on a hot streak. So what? The things I could learn for you.

Shelley Levene

 * [to John Williamson] What the hell are you? You're a fuckin' secretary. Fuck you. Yeah, that's my message to ya: fuck you and kiss my ass, and if you don't like it baby, I'm going across the street to Jerry Graff, period. Fuck you.
 * That's defeatist! Fuck it!
 * You are a shit-head, Williamson. Can't think on your feet, you ought to keep your mouth closed.

Dialogue

 * Blake: Let me have your attention for a moment. 'Cause you're talking about what? You're talking about bitching about that sale you shot, some son of a bitch don't wanna buy land, somebody don't want what you're selling, some broad you're trying to screw, so forth. Let's talk about something important. [to John Williamson] Are they all here?
 * John Williamson: All but one.
 * Blake: Well, I'm going anyway. Let's talk about something important. [to Shelley] Put that coffee down! Coffee's for closers only. You think I'm fucking with you? I am not fucking with you. I'm here from downtown. I'm here from Mitch and Murray, and I'm here on a mission of mercy! Your name's Levene?
 * Shelley Levene: Yeah.
 * Blake: You call yourself a salesman, you son of a bitch?
 * Dave Moss: I don't gotta listen to this shit.
 * Blake: You certainly don't, pal, 'cause the good news is you're fired. The bad news is you've got — all of you've got — just one week to regain your jobs, starting with tonight. Starting with tonight's sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good, 'cause we're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anybody wanna see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. Do you get the picture? Are you laughing now? You got leads. Mitch and Murray paid good money. Get their names to sell them! You can't close the leads you're given? You can't close shit? You are shit! Hit the bricks, pal, and beat it 'cause you are going out!
 * Shelley: The leads are weak!
 * Blake: The leads are weak? Fucking leads are weak? You're weak. I've been in this business 15 years.
 * Dave: What's your name?
 * Blake: Fuck you! That's my name! You know why, mister? 'Cause you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight. I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name! [to Shelley] And your name is: you're wanting and you can't play in a man's game. You can't close them? Then go home and tell your wife your troubles. [to everyone again] Because only one thing counts in this life! Get them to sign on the line which is dotted! You hear me, you fucking faggots? [Flips over a blackboard with slogans written on it] A–B–C. A: Always, B: Be, C: Closing. Always be closing. Always be closing! A–I–D–A. Attention, Interest, Decision, Action. Attention: do I have your attention? Interest: are you interested? I know you are, 'cause it's fuck or walk. You close, or you hit the bricks! Decision: have you made your decision for Christ? And action. A–I–D–A. Get out there! You got the prospects coming in; you think they came in to get outta the rain? A guy don't walk on the lot unless he wants to buy. They're sitting out there waiting to give you their money. Are you gonna take it? Are you man enough to take it?
 * Dave: Incredible.
 * Blake: [to Moss] What's the problem, pal? You, Moss.
 * Dave: You're such a hero. You’re so rich. How come you’re coming down here and waste your time with such a bunch of bums?
 * Blake: You see this watch? [takes off his gold watch] You see this watch?
 * Dave: Yeah.
 * Blake: That watch cost more than your car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see, pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy? I don't give a shit. Good father? Fuck you! Go home and play with your kids. [to everyone] You wanna work here? Close! [to George Aaronow] You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit? You don't like it, leave. I can go out there tonight with the materials you got, make myself $15,000, tonight, in two hours! Can you? Can you? Go and do likewise! A–I–D–A! Get mad, you son of a bitches! Get mad! You know what it takes to sell real estate? [poses with a pair of metal balls on a wire] It takes brass balls to sell real estate. Go and do likewise, gents. The money's out there. You pick it up, it's yours. You don't, I got no sympathy for you. You wanna go out on those sits tonight and close — close! — it's yours. Not, you're gonna be shining my shoes. And you know what you'll be saying — bunch of losers, sitting around in a bar? "Oh yeah, I used to be a salesman. It's a tough racket." These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads, and to you, they're gold, and you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you is just throwing them away. They're for closers. I'd wish you good luck, but you wouldn't know what to do with it if you got it. [to Moss as he puts on his watch again] And to answer your question, pal, why am I here? I came here because Mitch and Murray asked me to. They asked for a favor. I said, the real favor? Follow my advice and fire your fucking ass because a loser is a loser.

 * Ricky Roma: All train compartments smell vaguely of shit. It gets so you don't mind it. That's the worse thing that I can confess. You know how long it took me to get there? A long time. When you die, you're gonna regret the things you don't do. You think you're queer? I'm gonna tell you something: we're all queer. You think you're a thief? So what? You get befuddled by a middle-class morality? Get shot of it. Shut it out. You cheat on your wife? You did it. Live with it. Fuck little girls? So be it. There's an absolute morality? Maybe. And then what? If you think there is, go ahead, be that thing. Bad people go to hell? I don't think so. You think that? Act that way. A hell exists on Earth? Yes. I won't live in it. That's me. Did you ever take a dump made you feel like you'd just slept for twelve hours?
 * James Lingk: That I—
 * Ricky: Yes?
 * James: I don't know.
 * Roma: Or a piss? Great meals fade in reflection. Everything else gains. You know why? 'Cause it's only food. This shit we put on us keeps us going. It's only food. The great fucks you may have had, what do you remember about them?
 * James: What do I remember? I–
 * Ricky: I don't know. For me? I'm saying what it is. It's probably not the orgasm. Some broad's forearm on your neck, something her eyes did. There was this sound she made. Or it's me in the uh — I'm telling you — I'm in bed. The next day she brought me café au lait, gives me a cigarette. My balls feel like concrete. Hey, what I'm saying: what is our life? Our life is looking forward, or it's looking back. That's it. That's our life. Where's the moment? And what is it we're so afraid of?
 * James: Loss.
 * Ricky: What else? The bank closes. You get sick. My wife died on a plane. The stock market collapsed. What if these things happen? None of 'em. We worry anyway. Why?
 * Ricky: Stocks, bonds, objects of art, real estate. What are they? An opportunity. To what? To make money? Perhaps. To lose money? Perhaps. To indulge and to learn about ourselves? Perhaps! So fucking what? What isn't? They're an opportunity. That's all they are. They're an event. A guy comes to you. You make a call. You send in a card. "I have these properties I would like for you to see." What does this mean? What do you want it to mean? Do you see what I'm saying? Things happen to you. Glad I met you. I'm glad I met you, James. I want to show you something. It may mean something to you. It may not. I don't know. I don't know anymore. [takes out a brochure] What is that? Florida. Glengarry Highlands. Florida? Bullshit. And maybe that's true, and that's what I said. But look at this. [opens the brochure, with the words: 'Make Your Dreams Come True'] What is this? This is a piece of land.
 * Ricky: Stocks, bonds, objects of art, real estate. What are they? An opportunity. To what? To make money? Perhaps. To lose money? Perhaps. To indulge and to learn about ourselves? Perhaps! So fucking what? What isn't? They're an opportunity. That's all they are. They're an event. A guy comes to you. You make a call. You send in a card. "I have these properties I would like for you to see." What does this mean? What do you want it to mean? Do you see what I'm saying? Things happen to you. Glad I met you. I'm glad I met you, James. I want to show you something. It may mean something to you. It may not. I don't know. I don't know anymore. [takes out a brochure] What is that? Florida. Glengarry Highlands. Florida? Bullshit. And maybe that's true, and that's what I said. But look at this. [opens the brochure, with the words: 'Make Your Dreams Come True'] What is this? This is a piece of land.

 * Ricky Roma: [to James Lingk]: I'm going to tell you something. Your life is your own. You have a contract with your wife? You have certain things you do jointly? Bond there. And there are other things, and those things are yours, and you needn't feel ashamed. You needn't feel that you're being untrue, or that she would abandon you if she knew. This is your life.

 * George Aaronow: When I talk to the police, I get nervous.
 * Ricky Roma: Yes. You know who doesn't?
 * George: Who?
 * Ricky: Thieves. Always tell the truth, George; it's the easiest thing to remember.

 * Ricky Roma: [getting lead cards from Williamson] Ho, ho, ho! "Patel"? "Ravadem Patel"? Wh—how'm I gonna make a living on these dead-beats? Where'd you get this from, the morgue?
 * John Williamson: Look, I'm—
 * Ricky: Oh come on. What's the point? What's the fucking point in any case? I gotta argue with you? I gotta knock heads with the cops? I'm busting my balls selling your dirt to dead-beats! Money in the mattress! I come back, you can't even keep the contracts safe, I gotta go out and cl— [throws the cards at Williamson] Fuck this shit! I'm gonna go out and re-close last week's stuff.
 * John: No, no, no. The word from Murray is to leave them alone. He needs a new sit. He'll go out himself.
 * Ricky: Murray's gonna go out?
 * John: Yeah. He'll be the president of the company, just come in from out of town. All right?
 * Ricky: Okay, okay, okay. Give me this shit. [takes the leads again]
 * John: I'm giving you three leads.
 * Ricky: Three? No, I count two.
 * John: There's three leads there.
 * Ricky: "Patel"? Fuck you. Fucking Shiva handed this guy a million dollars, told him "Sign the deal!", he wouldn't sign. And the god Vishnu too, into the bargain. Fuck you, John! You know your business. I know mine. Your business is being an asshole. I find out whose fucking cousin you are, I'm going to go to him and figure out a way to have your ass! Fuck you! [throws the cards at Williamson again] I'm waiting for the new leads.

 * Dave Moss: You're fucked, Rick. Are you fucking nuts? You're hot, so you think you're the ruler of this place. You wanna—
 * Shelley Levene: Now, wait a minute, Dave.
 * Dave: Shut up!
 * Shelley: Okay.
 * Dave: You want to decide who should be dealt with how, is that it? I come in the fucking office today, I get humiliated by some jack-off cop. I get accused of— I get the shit thrown in my face by you, you genuine shit, because you're top name on the board?
 * Ricky Roma: Is that what I did, Dave? I humiliated you? Oh my God. I'm sorry.
 * Dave: Sitting on top of the world. Sitting on top of the world, everything's fucking peach fuzz.
 * Ricky: And I don't get a moment to spare for some bust-out humanitarian down on his luck lately?
 * Dave: Oh, fuck—
 * Ricky: Fuck you, Dave. You know you got a big mouth. You make a close, this whole place stinks with your farts for a week, how much you just ingested. Oh, what a big man you are! "Hey, let me buy you a pack of gum. I'll show you how to chew it." Ooh! Your pal closes, and all that comes out of your mouth is bile! How fucked-up you are!
 * Dave: Who's my pal, Ricky? Hmm? What are you? And what are you, Ricky? Huh? Bishop Sheen? What the fuck are you, Mr. Slick? Who— what the fuck are you: friend of the working man? Big deal! Fuck you! You got the memory of a fucking fly! I never liked you, anyway.
 * Ricky: What is this, your farewell speech?
 * Dave: I'm going home.
 * Ricky: Your farewell to the troops?
 * Dave: I'm not going home. I'm going to Wisconsin.
 * Ricky: Have a good trip.
 * Dave: Ah, fuck you! Fuck the lot of you! Fuck you all! [exits]
 * Ricky: [to Shelley] You were saying?

 * Ricky Roma: [to John Williamson] You stupid fucking cunt. You, Williamson, I'm talking to you, shithead. You just cost me $6,000. $6,000 and one Cadillac. That's right! What're you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about it, asshole? You're fucking shit. Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt, you idiot? Who ever told you that you could work with men?
 * Detective: Could I, uh—
 * Ricky: Oh, I'm gonna have your job, shithead. I'm going downtown, I'm gonna talk to Mitch and Murray. I'm going to Limpkin. I don't care whose nephew you are, who you know, whose dick you're sucking on, you're going out. I swear to you, you're going-
 * Detective: Come on. let's get this done.
 * Ricky: Anyone in this office lives on his wits. [to the detective] I'm gonna be with you in a second. [to John] What you're hired for is to help us. Does that seem clear to you? To help us, not to fuck us up. To help men who are going out there to try to earn a living, you fairy, you company man. I'll tell you something else. I hope you ripped the joint off. I can tell your friend here a little something might help him to catch you. You want to learn the first rule? You'd know if you spent a day in your life. Don't ever open your mouth 'til you know what the shot is, you fucking child!

 * John Williamson: The leads are coming!
 * Shelley Levene: Get 'em to me!
 * John: I talked to Mitch and Murray an hour ago. They're coming in, you understand. They're a bit upset about this morning's—
 * Shelley: Did you tell 'em about my sale?
 * John: How could I tell them about your sale? I don't even have a teleph— I'll tell them about your sale when they bring in the leads, all right? Shelley, all right? You closed a deal. Fine. You made a good sale. Fine.
 * Shelley: It's better than a good sale. It's—
 * John: Look, I have a lot on my mind right now. They're coming in, all right? They're very upset, I'm trying to make some sense—
 * Shelley: I'm telling you. The one thing you can tell them is that it's a remarkable sale.
 * John: The only thing remarkable about it is who you made it to.
 * Shelley: What the fuck does that mean?
 * John: That if the sale sticks, it'll be a miracle.
 * Shelley: What does that mean? Why would it not— oh, fuck you. You do not know your job. That's what I'm saying. You do not know your job. That's what I'm saying. A man is his job, and you are fucked at yours. All right, I'm done with you.

 * John Williamson: You said, "You don't make something up unless it's sure to help." How did you know I made it up?
 * Shelley Levene: What are you talking about?
 * John: I told the customer his contract went to the bank.
 * Shelley: Had it?
 * John: No, it hadn't.
 * Shelley: Don't fuck with me. Don't fuck with me! What are you getting at?
 * John: Well, I'm saying this, Shelley: Usually I take the contracts to the bank. Last night I didn't. Last night I stayed home with my kids. How did you know that? One night in a year I left a contract on my desk. No one knew that but you. Now how did you know that? You want to talk to me, or do you want to talk to someone else? [points to the office]
 * Shelley: Oh, for Christ's sake.
 * John: Because this is my job. This is my job on the line, and you are gonna talk to me! Now how did you know that contract was on my desk?
 * Shelley: You are so full of shit.
 * John: You robbed the office.
 * Shelley: Oh sure, I robbed the office! Oh, sure! You're an asshole.
 * John: What did you do with the leads? You want to go in there? I tell him what I know, he's gonna dig up something. You got an alibi last night, Shelley? You better have one. What did you do with the leads? If you tell me what you did with the leads, we can talk.
 * Shelley: Well, I don't know what the hell you're talking about!
 * John: If you tell me where the leads are I won't turn you in. If you don't, I'm gonna tell a cop you stole them. Mitch and Murray will see that you go to jail. Believe me, they will! Now where are the leads? I'm walking in that door. You got five seconds to tell me or you are going to jail!
 * Shelley: Ah, go on.
 * John: Yeah, I don't care! You understand? Where are the leads?
 * Shelley: I—
 * John: All right. [walks to the office]
 * Shelley: I sold 'em.

 * Shelley Levene: [as John heads to the office] Don't!
 * John Williamson: I'm sorry.
 * Shelley: Why?
 * John: Because I don't like you.
 * Shelley: My daughter.
 * John: Fuck you!

Taglines

 * A Story For Everyone Who Works For A Living.
 * Lie. Cheat. Steal. All In A Day's Work.

Cast

 * Al Pacino - Richard "Ricky" Roma
 * Jack Lemmon - Shelley "The Machine" Levene
 * Alec Baldwin - Blake
 * Ed Harris - Dave Moss
 * Alan Arkin - George Aaronow
 * Kevin Spacey - John Williamson
 * Jonathan Pryce - James Lingk
 * Bruce Altman - Larry Spannel
 * Jude Ciccolella - Detective

title: Glengarry Glen Ross (film)


text:
Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis (7 February 1885 – 10 January 1951) was an American writer, the first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, in 1930. He was the second husband of Dorothy Thompson.

Quotes

 * Every compulsion is put upon writers to become safe, polite, obedient, and sterile. In protest, I declined election to the National Institute of Arts and Letters some years ago, and now I must decline the Pulitzer Prize.
 * Letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith

 * Fortune has dealt with me rather too well. I have known little struggle, not much poverty, many generosities. Now and then I have, for my books or myself, been somewhat warmly denounced — there was one good pastor in California who upon reading my Elmer Gantry desired to lead a mob and lynch me, while another holy man in the state of Maine wondered if there was no respectable and righteous way of putting me in jail. And, much harder to endure than any raging condemnation, a certain number of old acquaintances among journalists, what in the galloping American slang we call the "I Knew Him When Club", have scribbled that since they know me personally, therefore I must be a rather low sort of fellow and certainly no writer. But if I have now and then received such cheering brickbats, still I, who have heaved a good many bricks myself, would be fatuous not to expect a fair number in return.
 * Nobel Lecture (12 December 1930)

 * The trouble with this country is... that there're too many people going about saying "The trouble with this country is—"
 * Dodsworth, Ch. 10 (1929)

 * Slow yellow river flowing, willows that gesture in tepid August airs, and four children playing at greatness, as, doubtless, great men themselves must play.
 * Ann Vickers (1933) First lines.

 * Probably none of the Weagles gave five minutes' thought a year to theology or ecclesiology, except Ora, who occasionally stirred up a lot of interesting family irritation by announcing that he was going to become a Catholic, an Episcopalian, a Buddhist, or a Seventh Day Adventist.
 * Work of Art (1934) Ch. 4

 * Myron reflected that there are so many people in the world who are eager to do for you things that you do not wish done, provided only that you will do for them things that you don't wish to do.
 * Work of Art (1934) Ch. 21

 * I understand you all want to be writers. Well, what are you doing here? Why the devil aren't you home writing?
 * Addressing students at the in the spring of 1945; as quoted in "Under the Reading Lamp" by La Vere Anderson, Tulsa World (July 15, 1945), p. 39

 * Mr. Blingham, and may he fry in his own cooking-oil, was assistant treasurer of the Flaver-Saver Company.
 * Kingsblood Royal (1947) First lines.

The Job (1917)

 * His entire system of theology was comprised in the Bible, which he never read, and the Methodist Church, which he rarely attended.

 * Fine, large, meaningless, general terms like romance and business can always be related. They take the place of thinking, and are highly useful to optimists and lecturers.

 * The reason for it all, nobody who is actually engaged in it can tell you, except the bosses, who believe that these sacred rites of composing dull letters and solemnly filing them away are observed in order that they may buy the large automobiles in which they do not have time to take the air.

 * Mr. Wilkins came back and hemmed and hawed a good deal; he praised the work she hadn't considered well done, and pointed out faults in what she considered particularly clever achievements.

 * It has been calculated that ninety-three million women in all parts of the world have ruined their complexions, and therefore, their souls, by Pemberton's creams and lotions for saving the same; and that nearly three-tenths of the alcohol consumed in prohibition counties is obtained in Pemberton's tonics and blood-builders and women's specifics, the last being regarded by large farmers with beards as especially tasty and stimulating.

 * This age, which should adjudge happiness to be as valuable as soap or munitions, would never come so long as the workers accepted the testimony of paid spokesmen... to the effect that they were contented and happy, rather than the evidence of their own wincing nerves to the effect that they live in a polite version of hell.

Main Street (1920)

 * She was not a Respectable Married Woman but fully a human being.

 * There had to be one man in town independent enough to sass the banker!

 * I went to a denominational college and learned that 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.

 * The outhouse was so overmodestly masked with vines and lattice that it was not concealed at all.

 * 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! Just give us a bit more time and we’ll produce it; trust us; we’re 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.

 * "I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday.

 * Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting than intelligent hatred is demanding love. "She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race... They were staggered to learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden;... that there are Ministers of the Gospel who accept evolution; that some persons of intelligence and business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight;... that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel organ... 'Where does she get all them the'ries?' marveled Uncle Whittier Smail.

 * The greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours a day. It is this which puzzles the longshoreman about the clerk, the Londoner about the bushman.

 * It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is better off than others.

 * With... small-town life... there are hundreds of thousands... who are not content. The more intelligent young people... flee to the cities... and... stay there, seldom returning even for holidays. The reason, Carol insisted... is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment... the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is the slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world.

 * Except for half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement of ignorance which is so easy to come by. To be 'intellectual' or 'artistic' or, in their own word, to be 'highbrow,' is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.

 * A village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking to conquer the earth... Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the sayings of Confucius. Such a society functions admirably in the production of cheap automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but of the convenience of safety razors.

 * Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door and calling 'em 'Brother' and 'Sister,' they let me sail right by with nary a clinch.

 * Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself.

 * The doctor asserted, 'Sure religion is a fine influence—got to have it to keep the lower classes in order—fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of these fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it out, and they knew more about it than we do.' He believed in the Christian religion, and never thought about it; he believed in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she lacked. Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic. When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children to think about; when she experimented with the Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to store-keeping elders giving unvarying weekly testimony in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as 'washed in the blood of the lamb' and 'a vengeful God...' then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she went to church suppers a felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call, 'My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come into abiding grace,' then Carol found the humanness behind the sanguinary and alien theology.

 * There are two insults which no human being will endure: The assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble.

 * She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.

 * Think how much better it is to criticize conventional customs if you yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't say you're attacking them to excuse your own infractions. Yes, I've heard that plea.... To word it differently, 'You must live up to the popular code if you believe in it; but if you don't believe in it, then you must live up to it!'

Babbitt (1922)

 * The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. ~ Ch. 1 [first sentence]

 * He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding each new intricate mechanism—metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder—he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical and initiated. ~ Ch. 6

 * Being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. ~ Ch. 6

 * Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber of Commerce had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them had spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion. ~ Ch. 6

 * At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from the Civil War straight to a farm which, though it was officially within the city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had never ridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book save the Bible, McGuffey's readers, and religious tracts; and he believed that the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel, and that the United States is a democracy.~ Ch. 6

 * Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophet of Punch, has shown that he is the world's greatest salesman of salvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritual regeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. He has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an average cost of less than ten dollars a head. ~ Ch. 7

 * I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It is one big railroad station—with all the people taking tickets for the best cemeteries. ~ Ch. 7

 * Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be his individuality. These standard advertised wares—toothpastes, socks, tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters—were his symbols and proofs of excellence; at first sight the signs, then the substitutes, for joy and passion and wisdom. ~ Ch. 7

 * What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their standardized minds are the enemy. ~ Ch. 7

 * The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trouser-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever. ~ Ch. 8

 * The dinner was the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. ~ Ch. 8

 * For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom. ~ Ch. 9

 * They all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor who did deliver it. ~ Ch. 10

 * Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. ~ Ch. 12

 * The content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven.... Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business, to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which 'did a fellow good — kept him in touch with higher things.' ~ Ch. 16

 * She did her work with the thoroughness of mind which reveres details and never quite understands them. ~ Ch. 18

 * It came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never run away from himself. ~ Ch. 25

 * They were newly rich contractors who, having bought houses, motors, hand-painted pictures, and gentlemanliness, were now buying a refined ready-made philosophy. It had been a tossup with them whether to buy New Thought, Christian Science, or a good standard high-church model of Episcopalianism. ~ Ch. 30

 * He heard them whispering—whispering... The independence seeped out of him and he walked the streets alone, afraid of men's cynical eyes and the incessant hiss of whispering. ~ Ch. 32

 * All of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought, dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary. ~ Ch. 34

 * He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but Dr. John Jennison said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take a chance. ~ Ch. 34

Arrowsmith (1925)

 * The driver of the wagon swaying through forest and swamp of the Ohio wilderness was a ragged girl of fourteen. ~ Ch. 1, First lines

 * It is not a snobbish rich-man's college, devoted to leisurely nonsense. It is the property of the people of the state, and what they want—or what they are told they want—is a mill to turn out men and women who will lead moral lives, play bridge, drive good cars, be enterprising in business, and occasionally mention books, though they are not expected to have time to read them. It is a Ford Motor Factory, and if its products rattle a little, they are beautifully standardized, with perfectly interchangeable parts. ~ Ch 2

 * He was permitted, without restriction, to speak of himself as immoral, agnostic and socialistic, so long as it was universally known that he remained pure, Presbyterian, and Republican. ~ Ch. 2

 * In the study of the profession to which he had looked forward all his life he found irritation and vacuity as well as serene wisdom; he saw no one clear path to Truth but a thousand paths to a thousand truths far-off and doubtful. ~ Ch. 2

 * Gentlemen, the most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it. And the most important part of experimentation is not doing the experiment but making notes, ve-ry accurate quantitative notes — in ink. I am told that a great many clever people feel they can keep notes in their heads. I have often observed with pleasure that such persons do not have heads in which to keep their notes. This iss very good, because thus the world never sees their results and science is not encumbered with them. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 4

 * There was much conversation, most of which sounded like the rest of it. ~ Ch. 14

 * Like all ardent agnostics, Martin was a religious man. ~ Ch. 16

 * It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends. ~ Ch. 20

 * He preached to himself, as Max Gottlieb had once preached to him, the loyalty of dissent, the faith of being very doubtful, the gospel of not bawling gospels, the wisdom of admitting the probable ignorance of one's self and of everybody else, and the energetic acceleration of a Movement for going very slow. ~ Ch 21

 * Pickerbaugh apparently believed that this research would take six weeks; Martin had hoped to do it in two years; and with the present interruptions it would require two hundred. ~ Ch. 21

 * He still had a fragment of his boyhood belief that congressmen were persons of intelligence and importance. ~ Ch. 22

 * I must say I'm not very fond of oratory that's so full of energy it hasn't any room for facts. ~ Martin, Ch. 22

 * It is not known whether Martin ever completely accepted as a gentleman-scholar the Clay Tredgold who was devoted to everything about astronomy except studying it. ~ Ch. 22

 * She had called Martin a 'lie-hunter,' a 'truth-seeker.' They decided now that most people who call themselves 'truth-seekers'—persons who scurry about chattering of Truth as though it were a tangible separable thing, like houses or salt or bread—did not so much desire to find Truth as to cure their mental itch. In novels, these truth-seekers quested the 'secret of life' in laboratories which did not seem to be provided with Bunsen flames or reagents; or they went, at great expense and much discomfort from hot trains and undesirable snakes, to Himalayan monasteries, to learn from unaseptic sages that the Mind can do all sort of edifying things if one will but spend thirty or forty years in eating rice and gazing on one's navel. To these high matters Martin responded, 'Rot!' He insisted that there is no Truth but only many truths; that Truth is not a colored bird to be chased among the rocks and captured by its tail, but a skeptical attitude toward life. He insisted that no one could expect more than, by stubbornness or luck, to have the kind of work he enjoyed and an ability to become better acquainted with the facts of that work than the average job-holder. ~ Ch. 25

 * Men of measured merriment! Damn the great executives, the men of measured merriment, damn the men with careful smiles, damn the men that run the shops, oh, damn their measured merriment, the men with measured merriment, oh, damn their measured merriment, and DAMN their careful smiles! ~ Ch. 25

 * You have curiosity and you are stubborn. You do not accept rules. Therefore I t'ink you will either make a very good scientist or a very bad one, and if you are bad enough, you will be popular with the rich ladies who rule this city, New York, and you can gif lectures for a living or even become, if you get to be plausible enough, a college president. So anyvay, it will be interesting. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

 * Perhaps I am a crank, Martin. There are many who hate me. There are plots against me—oh, you t'ink I imagine it, but you shall see! I make many mistakes. But one thing I keep always pure: the religion of a scientist. To be a scientist—it is not just a different job, so that a man should choose between being a scientist and being an explorer or a bond-salesman or a physician or a king or a farmer. It is a tangle of ver-y obscure emotions, like mysticism, or wanting to write poetry; it makes its victim all different from the good normal man. The normal man, he does not care much what he does except that he should eat and sleep and make love. But the scientist is intensely religious—he is so religious that he will not accept quarter-truths, because they are an insult to his faith. He wants that everything should be subject to inexorable laws. He is equal opposed to the capitalists who t'ink their silly money-grabbing is a system, and to liberals who t'ink man is not a fighting animal; he takes both the American booster and the European aristocrat, and he ignores all their blithering. Ignores it! All of it! He hates the preachers who talk their fables, but he iss not too kindly to the anthropologists and historians who can only make guesses, yet they have the nerf to call themselves scientists! Oh, yes, he is a man that all nice good-natured people should naturally hate! ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

 * He is the only real revolutionary, the authentic scientist, because he alone knows how liddle he knows. He must be heartless. He lives in a cold, clear light. Yet dis is a funny t'ing: really, in private, he is not cold nor heartless—so much less cold than the Professional Optimists. ~ Gottlieb, Ch. 26

 * They've worked out elaborate charts classifying all intellectual occupations and interests, with the methods and materials and tools, and especially the goals—the aims, the ideals, the moral purposes—that are suited to each of them. Really tremendous! Why, a musician or an engineer, for example, could look at his chart and tell accurately whether he was progressing fast enough, at his age, and if not, just what his trouble was, and the remedy. ~ Ch. 40

Elmer Gantry (1927)

 * Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk.
 * First lines

 * He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously.

 * He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.

 * Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.

 * The grateful savants had accepted, and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning.

 * His reasoning had been introverted, turned from an examination of men as mammals and devoted to a sorrow that sinful and aching souls should not more readily seek the security of a mystic process known as Conviction, Repentance, and Salvation, which he was assured by the noblest and most literate men he had ever known, was guaranteed to cure all woe. His own experience did not absolutely confirm this.

 * "Even if some details of dogma aren't true—or even all of 'em—think what a consolation religion and the church are to weak humanity!" "Are they? I wonder! Don't cheerful agnostics, who know they are going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven—or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong—if God may not be a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they'll go to hell themselves. Consolation? No!"

 * It was not her eloquence but her healing of the sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned evangelist in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely to be saved more than three of four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.

 * To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring to explain before dozens of popeyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand—fifty thousand—a million a year, and all this by the Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine.

 * He had never been sure but that there might be something to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a hell of burning sulphur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his New Thoughts, his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant anything. It did not matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements.

 * What had he learned? Enough Hebrew and Greek to be able to crawl through the Bible by using lexicons—so that, like all his classmates once they were out of the seminary, he always read it in English. A good many of the more condemnatory texts of the Bible—rather less than the average Holy Roller carpenter-evangelist. The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers.

 * 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.

 * His text was from Proverbs: "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins." He seized the sides of the pulpit with his powerful hands, glared at the congregation, decided to look benevolent after all, and exploded: ''"In the hustle and bustle of daily life I wonder how many of us stop to think that in all that is highest and best we are ruled not by even our most up-and-coming efforts but by Love? What is Love—the divine Love of which the—the great singer teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow that comes after the dark cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest stars we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still around the quiet tomb. What is it inspires all great men—be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed is music but the voice of Love!"
 * Elmer Gantry, paraphrasing the eloquence of the "atheist" Robert G. Ingersoll in his sermon.

 * He explained that hatred was low. However, for the benefit of the more leathery and zealous deacons down front, he permitted them to hate all Catholics, all persons who failed to believe in hell and immersion, and all rich mortgage-holders, wantoning in the betraying smiles of scarlet women, each of whom wore silk and in her bejeweled hand held a ruby glass of perfidious wine.

 * He was still not at all certain that he was doing any good, aside from providing the drug of religious hope to timorous folk frightened of hell-fire and afraid to walk alone.

 * I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me—I actually took my teachers seriously!

 * A proper school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists".

 * Just what are the teachings of Christ? Did he come to bring peace or more war? He says both. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against them? He says both. Did he ever - think of it, God himself, taking on human form to help the earth - did he ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions from plagues? And you can't say his failure there was because he was too lofty to consider mere sickness. On the contrary, he was awfully interested in it, always healing some one - providing they flattered his vanity enough! What did he teach? One place in the Sermon on the Mount he advises - let me get my Bible - here it is: 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven,' and then five minutes later he's saying, 'Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven." That's an absolute contradiction, in the one document which is the charter of the whole Christian Church. Oh, I know you can reconcile them, Phil. That's the whole aim of the ministerial training: to teach us to reconcile contradictions by saying that one of them doesn't mean what it means - and it's always a good stunt to throw in 'You'd understand it if you'd only read it in the original Greek'!

It Can't Happen Here (1935)

 * 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.

 * So debated Doremus, like some hundreds of thousands of other craftsmen, teachers, lawyers, what-not, in some dozens of countries under a dictatorship, who were aware enough to resent the tyranny, conscientious enough not to take its bribes cynically, yet not so abnormally courageous as to go willingly to exile or dungeon or chopping-block—particularly when they "had wives and families to support."

 * He was an actor of genius. There was no more overwhelming actor on the stage, in the motion pictures, nor even in the pulpit. He would whirl arms, bang tables, glare from mad eyes, vomit Biblical wrath from a gaping mouth; but he would also coo like a nursing mother, beseech like an aching lover, and in between tricks would coldly and almost contemptuously jab his crowds with figures and facts—figures and facts that were inescapable even when, as often happened, they were entirely incorrect.

 * "Why are you so afraid of the word 'Fascism,' Doremus? Just a word—just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours—not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini—like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days—and have 'em really run the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. 'Nother words, have a doctor who won't take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!"

 * "No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs—" "Hell and damnation!" "Why, Pater!" "Don't call me 'Pater'! If I ever hear that 'can't make an omelet' phrase again, I'll start doing a little murder myself! It's used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men's souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!"
 * Argument between Doremus and his son, Philip

 * I know the Press only too well. Almost all editors hide away in spider-dens, men without thought of Family or Public Interest or the humble delights of jaunts out-of-doors, plotting how they can put over their lies, and advance their own positions and fill their greedy pocketbooks by calumniating Statesmen who have given their all for the common good and who are vulnerable because they stand out in the fierce Light that beats around the Throne.
 * President Buzz Windrip in his autobiography "Zero Hour."

 * Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors. . . . One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.

The God-Seeker (1949)

 * Aaron was uncomfortable and a little afraid. This, he thought, is how God might pray to his God. ~ Ch. 1

 * Reverend Lucius Fairlow... a mild-spoken young-old man with mild chestnut hair and a mild chestnut mustache and a conservative theology which stuck mildly to the pleasant certainties of God's anger and eternal hellfire. ~ Ch. 2

 * Aaron had learned… from Mr. Fairlow's two-hour sermons on "The Jealousy of an Angry Jehovah Who Hath Weighed Sinners in the Balance and Found Them Wanting",... that God was a torturer who punished small boys for sins they might commit later. ~ Ch. 3

 * Good sense from a child was not necessarily contemptible beside foolishness from a grown-up. ~ Ch. 3

 * When you think that most of us are doomed by divine grace to roast in hell, to say nothing of mortgages and hail and bad crops and extravagant womenfolks, 'tain't any laughing matter! ~ Ch. 3

 * It might be the doing of Satan, in whom Aaron anxiously believed with all of his being except, perhaps, his mind. ~ Ch. 4

 * It was of no use. That particular sort of coward and evader he was not, and he lay abed facing all his sins, all his slacknesses, and the merited punishment by a just and angry God. ~ Ch. 5

 * Deacon Uriel Gadd was a man of integrity, granite-rough and lichen-coated. The punishment in his rheumatism, clearly sent of God, and the defection of his son Elijah, had weakened him only in making him somewhat less contemptuous of his sentimental son Aaron. All other persons he divided into fools, scoundrels and the blessedly elect, with only himself indisputably in the last class. ~ Ch. 6

 * Hours then of blasphemy and fury and debate, all in the theological terms that seem shocking to the literate citizens today, who believe in God but just don't care to mention him or any of the other lowly friends they knew before they went to Yale. ~ Ch. 6

 * Everything seemed confused and contradictory, and he longed for one clear command from a divine martinet. ~ Ch. 7

 * Maybe he was not a good-enough Christian to get the proper zest out of mortifying his indolent flesh. ~ Ch. 15

 * Now we got a lawyer, we got civilization, which I understand to mean that a man has a chance to get rich without working. ~ Ch. 17

 * The more the Dakota have to do with the white, the worse. The whites give him whiskey to get his furs and bimeby he don't want to trap so many furst but he want plenty more whiskey. The white traders take his girl, and all he get in swap is a disease. They take his land, and all he get is a leetle annuity so he don't do any work and starve slow. The Indian gets white man's gun an he is drunk and kill his own brother and they call him sinful. That's what he get from the white man—fine kettle, fine gun, fine blanket, the big pox, the small pox and religion. ~ Ch. 20

 * Mostly the adult Indians did not wish their children to learn these arts from the emissaries of what they astonishingly considered an alien, false and hostile God. ~ Ch. 21

 * As they talked around the fire in the sitting-room, he was embarrassed by the nakedness of their piety. ~ Ch. 22

 * When he gets uppity about his supposed learning, I just take it on myself to remind him that God and his angels know almost as much as college professors ~ Ch. 23

 *  He prayed, 'Lord God, let us be the kind of Christians that you would be if you were a Christian'. ~ Ch. 24

 * Aaron began to learn the Dakota language. Isaac, like a newly ordained Doctor of Philosophy, after years of being nagged into learning, rejoiced to be invited to stand up and look important and teach. He was astonished by his own erudition and by the fact that his class of one did not walk out. ~ Ch. 31

 * He fretted that he did not know anything. He sighed, 'I have sought the Kingdom of God a little, the Squire has sought it terribly, but we haven't even a map, and after what I saw this afternoon, I know the Sioux are as barbarous as we are. Is it possible that nobody has ever known—that there never has been a completely civilized man, and won't be for another thousand years? ~ Ch. 33

 * Indians, of course, have no 'theology,' and indeed no word for the system of credulity in which the white priests arrange for God, who must be entirely bewildered by it, a series of excuses for his failures. ~ Ch. 41

 * We should adopt Jesus boldly, and send missionaries to explain him to the whites, except that no Indian except one very old and sick and never much good in warfare would be pompous enough to tell alien peoples what he thinks they should believe. ~ Ch. 41

 * He had unhappily noticed at the mission that when he had most hotly prayed, it had been a way of escaping a decision, of frivolously passing the lot to God. ~ Ch. 50

 * I've sat at the preachers' feet and listened to them, faithfully, and tried to make myself become what they said I ought to be. I'm through! I do my own thinking now and my own bossing. ~ Ch. 51

 * It did seem sounder to build houses which he could build than to teach children a gospel which he did not altogether understand in a Sioux language which he could not quite speak. He reflected, 'If I could put over some kind of equality for Mark Shadrock and Black Wolf, that would be enough heavenly progress for me.' ~ Ch. 53

 * I don't believe in fear of divine vengeance, and I do believe in justice and equality.... ~ Ch. 57

 * An ugly woodshed that's there, right on the ground, is handsomer to me than a ten-story temple that isn't there. ~ Ch. 57

 * I have faith in Faith, I have reverence for all true Reverence. ~ Ch. 59

About Sinclair Lewis

 * Sinclair Lewis was a crypto-sentimentalist and a slovenly writer who managed a slight falsification of life in order to move the reader.
 * James Gould Cozzens, "Books: The Hermit of Lambertville", Time, 2 September 1957

 * Sinclair Lewis knew about the crazed feeling that you get when people think you’re a pleasant person. You get all this praise for your good behavior but inside you’re seething.
 * Louise Erdrich Interview with The Paris Review (2010)

 * His central characters are the pioneer, the doctor, the scientist, the businessman, and the feminist. The appeal of his best fiction lies in the opposition between his idealistic protagonists and an array of fools, charlatans, and scoundrels - evangelists, editorialists, pseudo-artists, cultists, and boosters.
 * Martin Light in The Quixotic Vision of Sinclair Lewis (1975)

 * I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.
 * George Bernard Shaw on Sinclair Lewis receiving the Nobel Prize (1930)

 * What was once Sinclair Lewis is buried in no ground. Even in life he was fully alive only in his writing. He lives in public libraries from Maine to California, in worn copies in the bookshelves of women from small towns who, in their girlhood, imagined themselves as Carol Kennicotts, and of medical men who, as youths, were inspired by Martin Arrowsmith.
 * Dorothy Thompson, his ex-wife, in "The Boy From Sauk Center" in The Atlantic (November 1960)

 * While I have never been of the majority that considers the Sinclair Lewis of Main Street and Babbitt a major novelist, I feel sad to report of Gideon Planish that I found it unimportant, sloppy, even dull. There is something endearing about Mr. Lewis as a writer that checks an entirely objective estimate of his recent work-perhaps his boyish idealism of which he is so boyishly ashamed, or the fact that his fictional creations seem so clearly to be aspects of his own many-faceted personality that one feels that to turn on him is to take unfair advantage of what he has been naïve enough to tell us about himself.
 * Diana Trilling Reviewing the Forties (1974)

Misattributed

 * When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.
 * Many variants of this exist, but the earliest known incident of such a comment appears to be a partial quote from James Waterman Wise, Jr., reported in a 1936 issue of The Christian Century: "in a recent address here before the liberal John Reed club [Wise] said that Hearst and Coughlin are the two chief exponents of fascism in America. If fascism comes, he added, it will not be identified with any 'shirt' movement, nor with an 'insignia,' but it will probably be 'wrapped up in the American flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution.'"
 * Another early quote is that of Halford E. Luccock, in Keeping Life Out of Confusion (1938): "When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled 'made in Germany'; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, 'Americanism.'" (This quote is also attributed in a New York Times article from September 12, 1938, page 15 as having been given in one of Luccock's sermons.)
 * Harrison Evans Salisbury in 1971 remarked about Lewis: "Sinclair Lewis aptly predicted in It Can't Happen Here that if fascism came to America it would come wrapped in the flag and whistling 'The Star Spangled Banner.'"

title: Sinclair Lewis