“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.”
Main Street (1920)
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Sinclair Lewis 136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951Related quotes

Source: Essays in tektology, 1980, p. 1-2.

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Munk debates – “21st Century will belong to China” – Kissinger, Zakaria, Ferguson, Li http://www.livestream.com/munkdebates/video?clipId=pla_937b4cf4-e0ea-4ed5-a458-6a3ba43769b8
2000s

Recollections of Thomas R. Marshall: A Hoosier Salad (1925), Chapter VI

Preface, p. 43
The Divine Milieu (1960)

“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.”
Epilogue: "Why Rome Fell", p. 665
The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944)

Attributed in Sholto Percy and Reuben Percy, The Percy Anecdotes (1826), Vol. 1, p. 55 http://books.google.com/books?id=5oJUAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA55