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1920

Showing 36 quotes from 1920

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing-a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. THe Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiousity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!

★ 1.9
Novel · Satire

I think perhaps we want a more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired of hearing politicians and priests and cautious reformers...coax us, "Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a Utopia already made; just 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.

Sinclair Lewis
Main Street · 1920
★ 1.9