# Quote — Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here

> Under a tyranny, most friends are a liability. One quarter of them turn "reasonable" and become your enemies, one quarter are afraid to speak, and one quarter are killed and you die with them. But the blessed final quarter keep you alive.

- Author: [Sinclair Lewis](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis.md)
- Book: [It Can't Happen Here](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/it-cant-happen-here.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sinclair_Lewis#It_Can't_Happen_Here_(1935)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/it-cant-happen-here/under-a-tyranny

## More from this book

> Despite strikes and riots all over the country, bloodily put down by the Minute Men, Windrip's power in Washington was maintained. The most liberal four members of the Supreme Court resigned and were replaced by surprisingly unknown lawyers who called President Windrip by his first name. A number of Congressmen were still being "protected" in the District of Columbia jail; others had seen the blinding light forever shed by the goddess Reason and happily returned to the Capitol. The Minute Men were increasingly loyal—they were still unpaid volunteers, but provided with "expense accounts" considerably larger than the pay of the regular troops. Never in American history had the adherents of a President been so well satisfied; they were not only appointed to whatever political jobs there were but to ever so many that really were not; and with such annoyances as Congressional Investigations hushed, the official awarders of contracts were on the merriest of terms with all contractors. . . . One veteran lobbyist for steel corporations complained that there was no more sport in his hunting—you were not only allowed but expected to shoot all government purchasing-agents sitting.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/it-cant-happen-here/despite-strikes-and.md)

> "No one abhors violence more than I do. Still, you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs—"
>
> "Hell and damnation!"
>
> "Why, Pater!"
>
> "Don't call me 'Pater'! If I ever hear that 'can't make an omelet' phrase again, I'll start doing a little murder myself! It's used to justify every atrocity under every despotism, Fascist or Nazi or Communist or American labor war. Omelet! Eggs! By God, sir, men's souls and blood are not eggshells for tyrants to break!"

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/it-cant-happen-here/no-one-abhors.md)

> So debated Doremus, like some hundreds of thousands of other craftsmen, teachers, lawyers, what-not, in some dozens of countries under a dictatorship, who were aware enough to resent the tyranny, conscientious enough not to take its bribes cynically, yet not so abnormally courageous as to go willingly to exile or dungeon or chopping-block—particularly when they "had wives and families to support."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/sinclair-lewis/it-cant-happen-here/so-debated-doremus.md)