I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.

What they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him; and that was what they wanted from the workingman, and also that was what they wanted from the...

It appeared as if the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.

…the priests of all these cults, the singers, shouters, prayers and exhorters of Bootstrap-lifting have as their distinguishing characteristic that they do very little lifting at their own bootstraps, and less at any other man’s....

Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold, his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. He saw the world of civilization then more plainly than ever he had seen it before; a...

I have used the illustration of soap and hot water; one can imagine he is actually watching the scrubbing process, seeing the proletarian Founder emerging all new and respectable under the brush of this capitalist...

Fascism is capitalism plus murder.

All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.

They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth in the inner soul of a city in which honor and justice, women’s bodies and men’s souls, were for sale in the market-place, and...

A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life.

They were the triumphant and insolent possessors; they had a hall, and a fire, and food and clothing and money, and so they might preach to hungry men, and the hungry men must be humble...

Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a...

All of this might seem diabolical, but the saloon-keeper was in no wise to blame for it. He was in the same plight as the manufacturer who has to adulterate and misrepresent his product. If...

To Jurgis the packers had been the equivalent to fate; Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws...

In the face of all his handicaps, Jurgis was obliged to make the price of a lodging, and of a drink every hour or two, under penalty of freezing to death.

The gates of memory would roll open—old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and...

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.