The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.
Upton SinclairRead
All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescabably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda.
Interpretation
Art serves to convey messages and influence perceptions, whether intentionally or not.
This quote by Upton Sinclair suggests that all forms of art inherently function as a means of propaganda. It emphasizes that art, regardless of the creator's intentions, seeks to communicate ideas, values, or beliefs that can shape public opinion and societal norms.
In practice
Use this quote in a discussion about the role of art in society during a lecture on modern art.
The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.
Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.
I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
And as for other men, who worked in tank-rooms full of steam, and in some of which there were open vats near the level of the floor, their peculiar trouble was that they fell into the vats; and when they were fished out, there was never enough of them left to be worth exhibiting,-sometimes they would be overlooked for days, till all but the bones of them had gone out into the world as Durham's Pure Leaf Lard! This contributed to the passing of the Pure Food Act of 1906.
Fascism is capitalism plus murder.
The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
Monet is only an eye, but my God, what an eye!
Always, when I do a play, there's got to be an equation of risks and potential failure. When you're working on a new play, it's like, 'How the hell do I do this, and do we have the time?' All of these huge questions engage, hopefully, the smartest part of me. And then when you're doing a revival, I went, 'Well, somebody's already solved it.'
My wearing my hair in locs on an Oscar red carpet was to showcase them in a positive light, to remind people of color that our hair is good enough.
There is nothing settled about a poet's identity. The becoming doesn't stop because the being has been achieved. They proceed together, attached in ways that are hard to be exact about.
Here's the truth you have to wrestle with: the reason that art (writing, engaging, leading, all of it) is valuable is precisely why I can't tell you how to do it. If there were a map, there'd be no art, because art is the act of navigating without a map. Don't you hate that? I love that there's no map.
Outlaws, like lovers, poets, and tubercular composers who cough blood onto piano keys, do their finest work in the slippery rays of the moon.
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