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Men Use Up Their Lives In Heart-breaking Political Struggles, Or Get Themselves Killed In Civil Wars, Or Tortured In The Secret Prisons Of The Gestapo, Not In Order To Establish Some Central-heated, Air-conditioned, Strip-lighted Paradise, But Because They Want A World In Which Human Beings Love One Another Instead Of Swindling And Murdering One Another.

-George Orwell

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Men Use Up Their

George Orwell

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Men Use Up Their Lives In Heart-breaking Political Struggles, Or Get Themselves Killed In Civil Wars, Or Tortured In The Secret Prisons Of The Gestapo, Not In Order To Establish Some Central-heated, Air-conditioned, Strip-lighted Paradise, But Because They Want A World In Which Human Beings Love One Another Instead Of Swindling And Murdering One Another.

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Prolonged, Indiscriminate Reviewing Of Books Is A Quite Exceptionally Thankless, Irritating And Exhausting Job. It Not Only Involves Praising Trash But Constantly Inventing Reactions Towards Books About Which One Has No Spontaneous Feeling Whatever.

The Educated Man Pictures A Horde Of Submen, Wanting Only A Day's Liberty To Loot His House, Burn His Books, And Set Him To Work Minding A Machine Or Sweeping Out A Lavatory. 'anything,' He Thinks, 'any Injustice, Sooner Than Let That Mob Loose.' He Does Not See That Since There Is No Difference Between The Mass Of Rich And Poor, There Is No Question Of Setting The Mob Loose. The Mob Is In Fact Loose Now, And--in The Shape Of Rich Men--is Using Its Power To Set Up Enormous Treadmills Of Boredom, Such As 'smart' Hotels.

Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimetres Inside Your Skull.

Those Who 'abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.

Sheer Egoism... Writers Share This Characteristic With Scientists, Artists, Politicians, Lawyers, Soldiers, Successful Businessmen - In Short, With The Whole Top Crust Of Humanity.

He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.

Processions, Meetings, Military Parades, Lectures, Waxwork Displays, Film Shows, Telescreen Programs All Had To Be Organized; Stands Had To Be Erected, Effigies Built, Slogans Coined, Songs Written, Rumours Circulated, Photographs Faked.

It Is Deliberate Policy To Keep Even The Favoured Groups Somewhere Near The Brink Of Hardship, Because A General State Of Scarcity Increases The Importance Of Small Privileges And Thus Magnifies The Distinction Between One Group And Another.

The Creatures Outside Looked From Pig To Man, And From Man To Pig, And From Pig To Man Again; But Already It Was Impossible To Say Which Was Which.

Day By Day And Almost Minute By Minute The Past Was Brought Up To Date. In This Way Every Prediction Made By The Party Could Be Shown By Documentary Evidence To Have Been Correct; Nor Was Any Item Of News, Or Any Expression Of Opinion, Which Conflicted With The Needs Of The Moment, Ever Allowed To Remain On Record. All History Was A Palimpsest, Scraped Clean And Reinscribed Exactly As Often As Was Necessary.

Cricket Is A Game Full Or Forlorn Hopes And Sudden Dramatic Changes Of Fortune And Its Rules Are So Ill-defined That Their Interpretation Is Partly An Ethical Business.

Part Of The Reason For The Ugliness Of Adults, In A Child's Eyes, Is That The Child Is Usually Looking Upwards, And Few Faces Are At Their Best When Seen From Below.

The Hospital Is The Antechamber To The Tomb

I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside... There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man.

One Defeats A Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.

Windmill Or No Windmill, He Said, Life Would Go On As It Had Always Gone On--that Is, Badly.

The Secret Of A Successful Restaurant Is Sharp Knives.

In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy But Always Against One's Own Body.

The Most Effective Way To Destroy People Is To Deny And Obliterate Their Own Understanding Of Their History.

So Much Of Left-wing Thought Is A Kind Of Playing With Fire By People Who Don't Even Know That Fire Is Hot.

Most People Approve Of Capital Punishment, But Most People Wouldn't Do The Hangman's Job.

So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

The Four Great Motives For Writing Prose Are Sheer Egoism, Esthetic Enthusiasm, Historical Impulse, And Political Purpose.

He Was Conscious Of Nothing Except The Blankness Of The Page In Front Of Him, The Itching Of The Skin Above His Ankle, The Blaring Of The Music, And A Slight Booziness Caused By The Gin.

The Tendency Of Advanced Capitalism Has Been To Enlarge The Middle Class And Not To Wipe It Out, As It Once Seemed Likely To Do.

It Is Brought Home To You...that It Is Only Because Miners Sweat Their Guts Out That Superior Persons Can Remain Superior.

Snobbishness, Like Hypocrisy, Is A Check Upon Behaviour Whose Value From A Social Point Of View Has Been Underrated.

Has It Ever Occurred To You,' He Said, 'that The Whole History Of English Poetry Has Been De-termined By The Fact That The English Language Lacks Rhymes?

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor.

I Had The Lonely Child's Habit Of Making Up Stories And Holding Conversations With Imaginary Persons, And I Think From The Very Start My Literary Ambitions Were Mixed Up With The Feeling Of Being Isolated And Undervalued. I Knew That I Had A Facility With Words And A Power Of Facing Unpleasant Facts, And I Felt That This Created A Sort Of Private World In Which I Could Get My Own Back For My Failure In Everyday Life.

The Atmosphere Of Orthodoxy Is Always Damaging To Prose, And Above All It Is Completely Ruinous To The Novel, The Most Anarchical Of All Forms Of Literature.

Poverty Is Spiritual Halitosis.

Confession Is Not Betrayal. What You Say Or Do Doesn't Matter; Only Feelings Matter. If They Could Make Me Stop Loving You-that Would Be The Real Betrayal.

You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty, And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

The Prime Necessities For Success In Life Are Money, Athleticism, Tailor Made Clothes And A Charming Smile.

Is Not Anyone With Any Degree Of Mental Honesty Conscious Of Telling Lies All Day Long, Both In Talking And Writing, Simply Because Lies Will Fall Into Artistic Shape When Truth Will Not?

How Could You Make Appeal To The Future When Not A Trace Of You, Not Even An Anonymous Word Scribbled On A Piece Of Paper, Could Physically Survive?

No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal Without Cause.

All Rulers In All Ages Have Tried To Impose A False View Of The World Upon Their Followers.

It Struck Him That In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy, But Always Against One’s Own Body... On The Battlefield, In The Torture Chamber, On A Sinking Ship, The Issues That You Are Fighting For Are Always Forgotten, Because The Body Swells Up Until It Fills The Universe, And Even When You Are Not Paralysed By Fright Or Screaming With Pain, Life Is A Moment-to-moment Struggle Against Hunger Or Cold Or Sleeplessness, Against A Sour Stomach Or An Aching Tooth.

[what Hayek] Does Not See, Or Will Not Admit, [is] That A Return To "free" Competition Means For The Great Mass Of People A Tyranny Probably Worse, Because More Irresponsible, Than That Of The State. The Trouble With Competitions Is That Somebody Wins Them. Professor Hayek Denies That Free Capitalism Necessarily Leads To Monopoly, But In Practice That Is Where It Has Led, And Since The Vast Majority Of People Would Far Rather Have State Regimentation Than Slumps And Unemployment, The Drift Towards Collectivism Is Bound To Continue If Popular Opinion Has Any Say In The Matter.

If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

Patriotism Has Nothing To Do With Conservatism. It Is Actually The Opposite Of Conservatism, Since It Is A Devotion To Something That Is Always Changing And Yet Is Felt To Be Mystically The Same.

It Could Not Have Been Ten Seconds, And Yet It Seemed A Long Time That Their Hands Were Clasped Together. He Had Time To Learn Every Detail Of Her Hand.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

Patriotism Is Usually Stronger Than Class Hatred, And Always Stronger Than Internationalism.

Human Beings Were Behaving As Human Beings And Not As Cogs In The Capitalist Machine.

I Did Try Very Hard To Tell The Whole Truth Without Violating My Literary Instincts.

The Party Told You To Reject The Evidence Of Your Eyes And Ears. It Was Their Final, Most Essential Command. His Heart Sank As He Thought Of The Enormous Power Arrayed Against Him, The Ease With Which Any Party Intellectual Would Overthrow Him In Debate, The Subtle Arguments Which He Would Not Be Able To Understand, Much Less Answer. And Yet He Was In The Right! They Were Wrong And He Was Right.

But The Thing That I Saw In Your Face No Power Can Disinherit: No Bomb That Ever Burst Shatters The Crystal Spirit.

A Fat Man Is Never So Happy As When He Is Describing Himself As "robust.

Perhaps A Man Really Dies When His Brain Stops, When He Loses The Power To Take In A New Idea.

The Pleasures Of Spring Are Available To Everybody And Cost Nothing.

There Is A Geographical Element In All Belief-saying What Seem Profound Truths In India Have A Way Of Seeming Enormous Platitudes In England, And Vice Versa . Perhaps The Fundamental Difference Is That Beneath A Tropical Sun Individuality Seems Less Distinct And The Loss Of It Less Important.

Comrades," He Said, "here Is A Point That Must Be Settled. The Wild Creatures, Such As Rats And Rabbits–are They Our Friends Or Our Enemies? Let Us Put It To The Vote. I Propose This Question To The Meeting: Are Rats Comrades?" The Vote Was Taken At Once, And It Was Agreed By An Overwhelming Majority That Rats Were Comrades. There Were Only Four Dissentients, The Three Dogs And The Cat, Who Was Afterwards Discovered To Have Voted On Both Sides.

All Propaganda Is Lies, Even When One Is Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

If You Want A Vision Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face - Forever.

Bombing Is Not Especially Inhumane. War Itself Is Inhumane And The Bombing Plane, Which Is Used To Paralyse Industry And Transport, Is A Relatively Civilised Weapon. 'normal' Or 'legitimate' Warfare Is Just As Destructive Of Inanimate Objects And Enormously So Of Human Lives.

Inanimate Objects

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me--

At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Ideas Of Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question. It Is Not Exactly Forbidden To Say This, That Or The Other, But It Is 'not Done' To Say It... Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing, Either In The Popular Press Or In The High-brow Periodicals.

Power-worship Blurs Political Judgment Because It Leads, Almost Unavoidably, To The Belief That Present Trends Will Continue. Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

And In The General Hardening Of Outlook That Set In ... Practices Which Had Been Long Abandoned ... -- Imprisonment Without Trial, The Use Of War Prisoners As Slaves, Public Executions, Torture To Extract Confessions, The Use Of Hostages And The Deportation Of Whole Populations -- Not Only Became Common Again, But Were Tolerated And Even Defended By People Who Considered Themselves Enlightened And Progressive.

All That Was Required Of Them (i.e. The Brain-washed Masses) Was A Primitive Patriotism Which Could Be Appealed To Whenever It Was Necessary To Make Them Accept Longer Working Hours Or Shorter Rations. And Even When They Became Discontented, As They Sometimes Did, Their Discontent Led Nowhere, Because, Being Without General Ideas, They Could Only Focus It On Petty Specific Grievances. The Larger Evils Invariably Escaped Their Notice.

To Exchange One Orthodoxy For Another Is Not Necessarily An Advance. The Enemy Is The Gramophone Mind, Whether Or Not One Agrees With The Record That Is Being Played At The Moment.

A Society Becomes Totalitarian When Its Structure Becomes Flagrantly Artificial: That Is, When Its Ruling Class Has Lost Its Function But Succeeds In Clinging To Power By Force Or Fraud.

Objective Truth

I Managed To Get My Copy Of Ulysses Through Safely This Time. I Rather Wish I Had Never Read It. It Gives Me An Inferiority Complex. When I Read A Book Like That And Then Come Back To My Own Work, I Feel Like A Eunuch Who Has Taken A Course In Voice Production.

His Answer To Every Problem, Every Setback Was “i Will Work Harder!” —which He Had Adopted As His Personal Motto.

All Men Are Enemies. All Animals Are Comrades

Objective Considerations Of Contemporary Phenomena Compel The Conclusion That Success Or Failure In Competitive Activities Exhibits No Tendency To Be Commensurate With Innate Capacity, But That A Considerable Element Of The Unpredictable Must Invaria.

...the Object Of Waging A War Is Always To Be In A Better Position In Which To Wage Another War.

Never Use A Foreign Phrase, A Scientific Word, Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent.

In My Opinion Nothing Has Contributed More To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country.

You Asked Me Once,' Said O'brien, 'what Was In Room 101. I Told You That You Knew The Answer Already. Everyone Knows It. The Thing That Is In Room 101 Is The Worst Thing In The World.

A Man Receiving Charity Always Hates His Benefactor- It Is A Fixed Characteristic Of Human Nature

The Point Is That We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right. Intellectually, It Is Possible To Carry On This Process For An Indefinite Time: The Only Check On It Is That Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.

The Party Is Not Concerned With Perpetuating Its Blood But With Perpetuating Itself. Who Wields Power Is Not Important, Provided That The Hierarchical Structure Remains Always The Same.

Winston Churchill Could Not Definitely Remember A Time When His Country Had Not Been At War.

The Fact Is That Certain Themes Cannot Be Celebrated In Words, And Tyranny Is One Of Them. No One Ever Wrote A Good Book In Praise Of The Inquisition.

Revolutions Only Effect A Radical Improvement When The Masses Are Alert And Know How To Chuck Out Their Leaders As Soon As The Latter Have Done Their Job.

In All The Useful Arts The World Is Either Standing Still Or Going Backwards.

The Ministry Of Truth, Which Concerned Itself With News, Entertainment, Education And Fine Arts. The Ministry Of Peace, Which Concerned Itself With War. The Ministry Of Love, Which Maintained Law And Order. And The Ministry Of Plenty, Which Is Responsible For Economic Affairs. Their Names, In Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv And Miniplenty

Every Line Of Serious Work That I Have Written Since 1936 Has Been Written, Directly Or Indirectly Against Totalitarianism And For Democratic Socialism As I Understand It.

Democratic Socialism

There Are Some Situations From Which One Can Only Escape By Acting Like A Devil Or A Lunatic.

The Way To Make A Million Dollars Is To Start A Religion.

Million Dollars

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

War Is Evil, But It Is Often The Lesser Evil.

The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity. When There Is A Gap Between One's Real And One's Declared Aims, One Turns, As It Were, Instinctively To Long Words And Exhausted Idioms, Like A Cuttlefish Squirting Out Ink.

Political Language

No Doubt Alcohol, Tobacco, And So Forth, Are Things That A Saint Must Avoid; But Sainthood Is Also A Thing That Human Beings Must Avoid.

... Ages In Which The Dominant Weapon Is Expensive Or Difficult To Make Will Tend To Be Ages Of Despotism, Whereas When The Dominant Weapon Is Cheap And Simple, The Common People Have A Chance... A Complex Weapon Makes The Strong Stronger, While A Simple Weapon -- So Long As There Is No Answer To It -- Gives Claws To The Weak.

The Moralist And The Revolutionary Are Constantly Undermining One Another. Marx Exploded A Hundred Tons Of Dynamite Beneath The Moralist Position, And We Are Still Living In The Echo Of That Tremendous Crash. But Already, Somewhere Or Other, The Sappers Are At Work And Fresh Dynamite Is Being Tamped In Place To Blow Marx At The Moon. Then Marx, Or Somebody Like Him, Will Come Back With Yet More Dynamite, And So The Process Continues, To An End We Cannot Foresee.

Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Unorthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future.

One Does Not Establish A Dictatorship In Order To Safeguard A Revolution; One Makes A Revolution In Order To Establish A Dictatorship.

The Modern Writer Who Has Influenced Me Most Is W. Somerset Maugham .

The Party Is Not Interested In The Overt Act. The Thought Is All We Care About.

The Aims Of These Three Groups Are Entirely Irreconcilable. The Aim Of The High Is To Remain Where They Are. The Aim Of The Middle Is To Change Places With The High. The Aim Of The Low, When They Have An Aim-for It Is An Abiding Characteristic Of The Low That They Are Too Much Crushed By Drudgery To Be More Than Intermittently Conscious Of Anything Outside Their Daily Lives -is To Abolish All Distinctions And Create A Society In Which All Men Shall Be Equal.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout With Some Painful Illness. One Would Never Undertake Such A Thing If One Were Not Driven On By Some Demon Whom One Can Neither Resist Nor Understand.

History Has To Move In A Certain Direction, Even If It Has To Be Pushed That Way By Neurotics.

England Is The Most Class-ridden Country Under The Sun. It Is A Land Of Snobbery And Privilege, Ruled Largely By The Old And Silly.

A Dirty Joke Is Not, Of Course, A Serious Attack On Morality, But It Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion, A Momentary Wish That Things Were Otherwise.

You Must Be An Intellectual. A Normal Person Would Never Believe A Thing Like That.

For A Creative Writer Possession Of The 'truth' Is Less Important Than Emotional Sincerity.

Since Pacifists Have More Freedom Of Action In Countries Where Traces Of Democracy Survive, Pacifism Can Act More Effectively Against Democracy Than For It. Objectively The Pacifist Is Pro-nazi.

On The Whole, Human Beings Want To Be Good, But Not Too Good, And Not Quite All The Time.

There Is No Swifter Route To The Corruption Of Thought Than Through The Corruption Of Language

Several Of Them Would Have Protested If They Could Have Found The Right Arguments.

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

Either We All Live In A Decent World, Or Nobody Does.

He Would Say That God Had Given Him A Tail To Keep The Flies Off, But That He Would Sooner Have Had No Tail And No Flies.

The Cat Joined The Re-education Committee And Was Very Active In It For Some Days. She Was Seen One Dag Sitting On A Roof And Talking To Some Sparrows Who Were Just Out Of Her Reach. She Was Telling Them That All Animals Were Now Comrades And That Any Sparrow Who Chose Could Come And Perch On Her Paw; But The Sparrows Kept Their Distance.

For A Second, Two Seconds, They Had Exchanged An Equivocal Glance, And That Was The End Of The Story. But Even That Was A Memorable Event, In The Locked Loneliness In Which One Had To Live.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Want To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings.

The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, But He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Political Language

Atrocities Committed

His Whole Mind And Body Seemed To Be Afflicted With An Unbearable Sensitivity, A Sort Of Transparency, Which Made Every Movement, Every Sound, Every Contact, Every Word That He Had To Speak Or Listen To, An Agony. Even In Sleep He Could Not Altogether Escape Form Her Image.

If He Thinks He Floats Off The Floor, And If I Simultaneously Think I See Him Do It, Then The Thing Happens.

Surely, Comrades, You Don't Want Jones Back?

Always Eyes Watching You And The Voice Enveloping You. Asleep Or Awake, Indoors Or Out Of Doors, In The Bath Or Bed- No Escape. Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimeters In Your Skull.

Sanity Is Not Statistical.

If One Looks Closely One Sees That There Is No Essential Difference Between A Beggar's Livelihood And That Of Numberless Respectable People. Beggars Do Not Work, It Is Said; But Then, What Is Work? A Navvy Works By Swinging A Pick. An Accountant Works By Adding Up Figures. A Beggar Works By Standing Out Of Doors In All Weathers And Getting Varicose Veins, Chronic Bronchitis, Etc. It Is A Trade Like Any Other; Quite Useless, Of Course - But Then, Many Reputable Trades Are Quite Useless.

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To He A Failure, And Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks. It Is Rather The Same Thing That Is Happening To The English Language. It Becomes Ugly And Inaccurate Because Our Thoughts Are Foolish, But The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

The War Is Not Meant To Be Won, It Is Meant To Be Continuous.

But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

If Human Equality Is To Be Forever Averted -- If The High, As We Have Called Them, Are To Keep Their Places Permanently -- Then The Prevailing Mental Condition Must Be Controlled Insanity.

Now He Had Recognized Himself As A Dead Man It Became Important To Stay Alive As Long As Possible.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself.

Keeping Secrets

Of Pain You Could Wish Only One Thing: That It Should Stop. Nothing In The World Was So Bad As Physical Pain. In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

Sanity Was Statistical. It Was Merely A Question Of Learning To Think As They Thought.

Oceania Was At War With Eurasia; Therefore Oceania Had Always Been At War With Eurasia.

I Would Sooner Be A Foreigner In Spain Than In Most Countries. How Easy It Is To Make Friends In Spain!

They Could Be Made To Accept The Most Flagrant Violations Of Reality, Because They Never Fully Grasped The Enormity Of What Was Demanded Of Them, And Were Not Sufficiently Interested In Public Events To Notice What Was Happening

The Object Of Powder Is Powder.

Big Brother Is Watching You.

No One, At Any Rate No English Writer, Has Written Better About Childhood Than Dickens. In Spite Of All The Knowledge That Has Accumulated Since, In Spite Of The Fact That Children Are Now Comparatively Sanely Treated, No Novelist Has Shown The Same Power Of Entering Into The Child's Point Of View.

And If Our Book Consumption Remains As Low As It Has Been, At Least Let Us Admit That It Is Because Reading Is A Less Exciting Pastime Than Going To The Dogs, The Pictures Or The Pub, And Not Because Books, Whether Bought Or Borrowed, Are Too Expensive.

You're Only A Rebel From The Waist Downwards,' He Told Her.

Everyone Believes In The Atrocities Of The Enemy And Disbelieves In Those Of His Own Side, Without Ever Bothering To Examine The Evidence.

Donkeys Live A Long Time. None Of You Has Ever Seen A Dead Donkey.

You Had To Live - Did Live, From Habit That Became Instinct - In The Assumption That Evey Sound You Made Was Overheard, And, Except In Darkness, Every Moment Scrutinized.

The Essential Point Here Is That All People With Small, Insecure Incomes Are In The Same Boat And Ought To Be Fighting On The Same Side. Probably We Could Do With A Little Less Talk About' Capitalist' And 'proletarian' And A Little More About The Robbers And The Robbed.

Economic Inequality

It Had Become Usual To Give Napoleon The Credit For Every Successful Achievement And Every Stroke Of Good Fortune. You Would Often Hear One Hen Remark To Another, "under The Guidance Of Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I Have Laid Five Eggs In Six Days" Or Two Cows, Enjoying A Drink At The Pool, Would Exclaim, "thanks To The Leadership Of Comrade Napoleon, How Excellent This Water Tastes!".

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality. In Left-wing Circles It Is Always Felt That There Is Something Slightly Disgraceful In Being An Englishman And That It Is A Duty To Snigger At Every English Institution, From Horse Racing To Suet Puddings. It Is A Strange Fact, But It Is Unquestionably True That Almost Any English Intellectual Would Feel More Ashamed Of Standing To Attention During God Save The King Than Of Stealing From A Poor Box.

Modern English, Especially Written English, Is Full Of Bad Habits Which Spread By Imitation And Which Can Be Avoided If One Is Willing To Take The Necessary Trouble.

He Thought With A Kind Of Astonishment Of The Biological Uselessness Of Pain And Fear, The Treachery Of The Human Body Which Always Freezes Into Inertia At Exactly The Moment When A Special Effort Is Needed.

Thoughtcrime Does Not Entail Death: Thoughtcrime Is Death.

I Am Well Acquainted With All The Arguments Against Freedom Of Thought And Speech - The Arguments Which Claim That It Cannot Exist, And The Arguments Which Claim That It Ought Not To. I Answer Simply That They Don't Convince Me And That Our Civilization Over A Period Of Four Hundred Years Has Been Founded On The Opposite Notice.

The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith—as Mysterious As Faith Itself.

Mysterious Things

Modern English, Especially Written English, Is Full Of Bad Habits Which Spread By Imitation And Which Can Be Avoided If One Is Willing To Take The Necessary Trouble. If One Gets Rid Of These Habits One Can Think More Clearly, And To Think Clearly Is A Necessary First Step Toward Political Regeneration: So That The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous And Is Not The Exclusive Concern Of Professional [or Scholarly] Writers.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist. This Is Elementary Common Sense. If You Hamper The War Effort Of One Side, You Automatically Help Out That Of The Other. Nor Is There Any Real Way Of Remaining Outside Such A War As The Present One. In Practice, 'he That Is Not With Me Is Against Me'.

The Puritanical Nonsense Of Excluding Children And Therefore To Some Extent Women From Pubs Has Turned These Places Into Mere Boozing Shops Instead Of The Family Gathering Places That They Ought To Be.

He Wondered Vaguely Whether In The Abolished Past It Had Been A Normal Experience To Lie In Bed Like This, In The Cool Of A Summer Evening, A Man And A Woman With No Clothes On, Making Love When They Chose, Talking Of What They Chose, Not Feeling Any Compulsion To Get Up, Simply Lying There And Listening To Peaceful Sounds Outside. Surely There Could Never Have Been A Time When That Seemed Ordinary?

In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible. Things Like The Continuance Of British Rule In India, The Russian Purges And Deportations, The Dropping Of The Atom Bombs On Japan, Can Indeed Be Defended, But Only By Arguments Which Are Too Brutal For Most People To Face, And Which Do Not Square With The Professed Aims Of The Political Parties. Thus Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness.

There Is Hardly Such A Thing As A War In Which It Makes No Difference Who Wins. Nearly Always One Side Stands More Of Less For Progress, The Other Side More Or Less For Reaction.

If I Had Understood The Situation A Bit Better I Should Probably Have Joined The Anarchists.

A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outline And Covering Up All The Details. The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity. When There Is A Gap Between One's Real And One's Declared Aims, One Turns As It Were Instinctively To Long Words And Exhausted Idioms, Like A Cuttlefish Spurting Out Ink. In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics'. All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred, And Schizophrenia. When The General Atmosphere Is Bad, Language Must Suffer.

That Rifle Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Labourer's Cottage Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

The Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.

Advertising Is The Rattling Of A Stick Inside A Swill Bucket.

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To Be A Failure, But Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks.

The Only Imaginative Prose Writer Of The Slightest Value Who Has Appeared Among The English-speaking Races For Some Years Past.

It Reminded Us That Propaganda In Some Form Or Other Lurks In Every Book, That Every Work Of Art Has A Meaning And A Purpose - A Political, Social And Religious Purpose - That Our Aesthetic Judgements Are Always Coloured By Our Prejudices And Beliefs

I Do Not Think One Can Assess A Writer's Motives Without Knowing Something Of His Early Development. His Subject Matter Will Be Determined By The Age He Lives In ... But Before He Ever Begins To Write He Will Have Acquired An Emotional Attitude From Which He Will Never Completely Escape.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

All The War-propaganda, All The Screaming And Lies And Hatred, Comes Invariably From People Who Are Not Fighting.

We Shall Abolish The Orgasm. Our Neurologists Are At Work Upon It Now.

People Invent New Machines And Improve Existing Ones Almost Unconsciously, Rather As A Somnambulist Will Go Walking In His Sleep. The Interesting Puzzle In Our Times Is That We So Willingly Sleepwalk Through The Process Of Reconstituting The Conditions Of Human Existence.

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip, But The Really Well-trained Dog Is The One That Turns His Somersault When There Is No Whip.

If You Have No Money, Men Won't Care For You, Women Won't Love You; Won't, That Is, Care For You Or Love You The Last Little Bit That Matters.

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

When One Watches Some Tired Hack On The Platform Mechanically Repeating The Familiar Phrases - Bestial Atrocities, Iron Heel, Blood-stained Tyranny, Free Peoples Of The World, Stand Shoulder To Shoulder - One Often Has A Curious Feeling That One Is Not Watching A Live Human Being But Some Kind Of Dummy, The Appropriate Noises Are Coming Out Of His Larynx, But His Brain Is Not Involved

One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing.

Mankind Is Not Likely To Salvage Civilization Unless He Can Evolve A System Of Good And Evil Which Is Independent Of Heaven And Hell.

Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Orthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.

All Art Is Propaganda.

Totalitarianism, If Not Fought Against, Could Triumph Anywhere.

Anyone Who Knows Of A Provable Instance Of Colour Discrimination Ought Always To Expose It.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent.

Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else.

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

Men Are Only As Good As Their Technical Development Allows Them To Be.

It Was Only A Hopeless Fantasy, It Passed Like An April Day, But A Look And A Word And The Dreams They Stirred They Have Stolen My Heart Away.

Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

But The Proles, If Only They Could Somehow Become Conscious Of Their Own Strength, Would Have No Need To Conspire. They Needed Only To Rise Up And Shake Themselves Like A Horse Shaking Off Flies. If They Chose They Could Blow The Party To Pieces Tomorrow Morning. Surely Sooner Or Later It Must Occur To Them To Do It? And Yet --!

The Organizing Principal For Any Culture Is War.

Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law.

Gordon Eyed Them With Inert Hatred. At This Moment He Hated All Books, And Novels Most Of All. Horrible To Think Of All That Soggy, Half-baked Trash Massed Together In One Place.

For After All, What Is There Behind, Except Money? Money For The Right Kind Of Education, Money For Influential Friends, Money For Leisure And Peace Of Mind, Money For Trips To Italy. Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

Except For The Small Revolutionary Groups Which Exist In All Countries, The Whole World Was Determined Upon Preventing Revolution In Spain. In Particular The Communist Party, With Soviet Russia Behind It, Had Thrown Its Whole Weight Against The Revolution. It Was The Communist Thesis That Revolution At This Stage Would Be Fatal And That What Was To Be Aimed At In Spain Was Not Workers' Control, But Bourgeois Democracy. It Hardly Needs Pointing Out Why 'liberal' Capitalist Opinion Took The Same Line.

For If Leisure And Security Were Enjoyed By All Alike, The Great Mass Of Human Beings Who Are Normally Stupefied By Poverty Would Become Literate And Would Learn To Think For Themselves; And When Once They Had Done This, They Would Sooner Or Later Realise That The Privileged Minority Had No Function, And They Would Sweep It Away. In The Long Run, A Hierarchical Society Was Only Possible On A Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance.

The Past Is A Curious Thing. It's With You All The Time. I Suppose An Hour Never Passes Without Your Thinking Of Things That Happened Ten Or Twenty Years Ago, And Yet Most Of The Time It's Got No Reality, It's Just A Set Of Facts That You've Learned, Like A Lot Of Stuff In A History Book. Then Some Chance Sight Or Sound Or Smell, Especially Smell, Sets You Going, And The Past Doesn't Merely Come Back To You, You're Actually In The Past. It Was Like That At This Moment.

The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

...in The Negative Part Of Professor's Hayek's Thesis There Is A Great Deal Of Truth. It Cannot Be Said Too Often - At Any Rate, It Is Not Being Said Nearly Often Enough - That Collectivism Is Not Inherently Democratic, But, On The Contrary, Gives To A Tyrannical Minority Such Powers As The Spanish Inquisitors Never Dreamt Of.

In My Opinion, Nothing Has Contributed So Much To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country And That Every Act Of Its Rulers Must Be Excused, If Not Imitated. And So For The Last Ten Years, I Have Been Convinced That The Destruction Of The Soviet Myth Was Essential If We Wanted A Revival Of The Socialist Movement.

Socialist Countries

The Main Motive For Nonattachment Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

There Exists A Huge Dump Of Worn-out Metaphors Which Have Lost All Evocative Power And Are Merely Used Because They Save People The Trouble Of Inventing Phrases For Themselves.

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