“ Very few people have the courage to be decently selfish—not answer letters—and demand the right to work. ”
 Sinclair Lewis, Arrowsmith (1925). copy citation

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“Oh, it's so much easier to be good-natured and purring and self-congratulatory and generally footless than it is to pound ahead and keep yourself strictly for your own work, the work that gets somewhere. Very few people have the courage to be decently selfish—not answer letters—and demand the right to work. If they had their way, these sentimentalists would've had a Newton—yes, or probably a Christ!—giving up everything they did for the world to address meetings and listen to the troubles of cranky old maids.” source