“What I fight in Zenith is the standardization of thought, and, of course, the traditions of competition.”
Babbitt (1922)
Context: 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
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Sinclair Lewis 136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951Related quotes

“This dead of midnight is the noon of thought,
And Wisdom mounts her zenith with the stars.”
A Summer's Evening Meditation.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Thou shalt not covet, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.”
The Latest Decalogue, l. 19-20.

Mr. Tesla Explains Why He Will Never Marry (1924)

"Dilemma of a Pacifist"(1937)
Context: I know now that there are things for which I am prepared to die. I am willing to die for political freedom; for the right to give my loyalty to ideals above a nation and above a class; for the right to teach my child what I think to be the truth; for the right to explore such knowledge as my brains can penetrate; for the right to love where my mind and heart admire, without reference to some dictator’s code to tell me what the national canons on the matter are; for the right to work with others of like mind; for a society that seems to me becoming to the dignity of the human race.
I shall pick no fight, nor seek to impose by force these standards on others. But let it be clear. If the fight comes unsolicited, I am not willing to die meekly, to surrender without effort. And that being so, am I still a pacifist?

Source: Letter to Lord Stanley (May 17, 1857), published in Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Vol. 15 (2011), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 265. ( online on google books https://books.google.at/books?id=NvJ0CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA265)

1910s, "Law and the Court" (1913)

Source: Interview at Recanto das Letras http://recantodasletras.com.br/entrevistas/625556, 2007.