Background Image

...

The Essence Of Oligarchical Rule Is Not Father-to-son Inheritance, But The Persistence Of A Certain World-view And A Certain Way Of Life, Imposed By The Dead Upon The Living. A Ruling Group Is A Ruling Group So Long As It Can Nominate Its Successors. 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.

-George Orwell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Essence Of Oligarchical

George Orwell

...

The Essence Of Oligarchical Rule Is Not Father-to-son Inheritance, But The Persistence Of A Certain World-view And A Certain Way Of Life, Imposed By The Dead Upon The Living. A Ruling Group Is A Ruling Group So Long As It Can Nominate Its Successors. 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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From George Orwell

I Believe That The Bbc, In Spite Of The Stupidity Of Its Foreign Propaganda And The Unbearable Voices Of Its Announcers, Is Very Truthful. It Is Generally Regarded Here As More Reliable Than The Press.

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.

Political Language

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

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.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself. You Must Know All The While That It Is There, But Until It Is Needed You Must Never Let It Emerge Into Your Consciousness In Any Shape That Can Be Given A Name.

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

And If All Others Accepted The Lie Which The Party Imposed—if All Records Told The Same Tale—then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth. 'who Controls The Past' Ran The Party Slogan, 'controls The Future: Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

The Whole Idea Of Revenge And Punishment Is A Childish Day-dream. Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Revenge. Revenge Is An Act Which You Want To Commit When You Are Powerless And Because You Are Powerless: As Soon As The Sense Of Impotence Is Removed, The Desire Evaporates Also.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought. A Bad Usage Can Spread By Tradition And Imitation Even Among People Who Should And Do Know Better.

No One Is Patriotic About Taxes.

All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News.

I Do Not Wish To Comment On The Work; If It Does Not Speak For Itself, It Is A Failure.

Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Ordinary Human Feeling. Everything Will Be Dead Inside You. Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Love, Or Friendship, Or Joy Of Living, Or Laughter, Or Curiosity, Or Courage, Or Integrity. You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.

Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print.

On Each Landing, Opposite The Lift Shaft, The Poster With The Enormous Face Gazed From The Wall. It Was One Of Those Pictures Which Are So Contrived That The Eyes Follow You About When You Move. Big Brother Is Watching You, The Caption Beneath It Ran.

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

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

We Control Matter Because We Control The Mind. Reality Is Inside The Skull.

Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.

The Books One Reads In Childhood, And Perhaps Most Of All The Bad And Good Bad Books, Create In One's Mind A Sort Of False Map Of The World, A Series Of Fabulous Countries Into Which One Can Retreat At Odd Moments Throughout The Rest Of Life, And Which In Some Cases Can Survive A Visit To The Real Countries Which They Are Supposed To Represent.

All True Tea Lovers Not Only Like Their Tea Strong, But Like It A Little Stronger With Each Year That Passes.

As Soon As You Think Of Fishing You Think Of Things That Don't Belong To The Modern World. The Very Idea Of Sitting All Day Under A Willow Tree Beside A Quiet Pool - And Being Able To Find A Quiet Pool To Sit Beside- Belongs To A Time Before The War, Before Radio, Before Aeroplanes, Before Hitler.

My Best Fishing-memory Is About Some Fish That I Never Caught.

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

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.

They Had Come To A Time When No One Dared Speak His Mind, When Fierce, Growling Dogs Roamed Everywhere, And When You Had To Watch Your Comrades Torn To Pieces After Confessing To Shocking Crimes.

A Peace That Was Truly Permanent Would Be The Same As A Permanent War.

The Object Of Power Is Power.

They Say That Time Heals All Things, They Say You Can Always Forget; But The Smiles And The Tears Across The Years They Twist My Heart Strings Yet!

In All The Modern Talk About Energy, Efficiency, Social Service And The Rest Of It, What Meaning Is There Except "get Money, Get It Legally, And Get A Lot Of It"? Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue.

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

To Talk, Simply To Talk! It Sounds So Little, And How Much It Is! When You Have Existed To The Brink Of Middle Age In Bitter Loneliness, Among People To Whom Your True Opinion On Every Subject On Earth Is Blasphemy, The Need To Talk Is The Greatest Of All Needs.

After 40, A Man Is Responsible For His Face.

Think Of Something You Really Care About. Then Add Hour To Hour And Calculate The Fraction Of Your Life That You've Actually Spent In Doing It. And Then Calculate The Time You've Spent On Things Like Shaving, Riding To And Fro On Buses, Waiting In Railway Junctions, Swapping Dirty Stories, And Reading The Newspapers.

Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.

It Was A Bright Cold Day In April, And The Clocks Were Striking Thirteen.

To Write Or Even Speak English Is Not A Science But An Art. There Are No Reliable Words.... Whoever Writes English Is Involved In A Struggle That Never Lets Up Even For A Sentence.

There Will Be No Curiosity, No Enjoyment Of The Process Of Life. All Competing Pleasures Will Be Destroyed. But Always— Do Not Forget This, Winston— Always There Will Be The Intoxication Of Power, Constantly Increasing And Constantly Growing Subtler. Always, At Every Moment, There Will Be The Thrill Of Victory, The Sensation Of Trampling On An Enemy Who Is Helpless. If You Want A Picture Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face— Forever.

The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.

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.

Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.

However Much You Deny The Truth, The Truth Goes On Existing.

I Hate Purity, I Hate Goodness! I Don't Want Virtue To Exist Anywhere. I Want Everyone To Be Corrupt To The Bones.

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

The People Will Believe What The Media Tells Them They Believe.

The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.

Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing

Poverty Frees Them From Ordinary Standards Of Behaviour, Just As Money Frees People From Work.

Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print. Never Use A Long Word Where A Short One Will Do. If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out Always Cut It Out. Never Use The Passive Voice Where You Can Use The Active. Never Use A Foreign Phrase A Scientific Word Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent. Break Any Of These Rules Sooner Than Say Anything Outright Barbarous.

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!".

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 Mistake You Make, Don't You See,is In Thinking One Can Live In A Corrupt Society Without Being Corrupt Oneself. After All, What Do You Achieve By Refusing To Make Money? You're Trying To Behave As Though One Could Stand Right Outside Our Economic System. But One Can't. One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing. One Can't Put Things Right In A Hole-and-corner Way, If You Take My Meaning.

The Penguin Books Are Splendid Value For Sixpence, So Splendid That If Other Publishers Had Any Sense They Would Combine Against Them And Suppress Them.

There Are Some Things Only Intellectuals Are Crazy Enough To Believe.

Antisemitism, For Instance, Is Simply Not The Doctrine Of A Grown-up Person.

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.

Totalitarianism, However, Does Not So Much Promise An Age Of Faith As An Age Of Schizophrenia. 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. Such A Society, No Matter How Long It Persists, Can Never Afford To Become Either Tolerant Or Intellectually Stable.

The Plant Is Blind But It Knows Enough To Keep Pushing Upwards Towards The Light, And It Will Continue To Do This In The Face Of Endless Discouragements.

What Is To Be Expected Of Them Is Not Treachery, Or Physcial Cowardice, But Stupidity, Unconscious Sabotage, An Infallible Instinct For Doing The Wrong Thing.

It Struck Him That The Truly Characteristic Thing About Modern Life Was Not Its Cruelty And Insecurity, But Simply Its Bareness, Its Dinginess, Its Listlessness. Life, If You Looked About You, Bore No Resemblance Not Only To The Lies That Streamed Out Of The Telescreens, But Even To The Ideals That The Party Was Trying To Achieve.

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.

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.

The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

If You Have Embraced A Creed Which Appears To Be Free From The Ordinary Dirtiness Of Politics - A Creed From Which You Yourself Cannot Expect To Draw Any Material Advantage - Surely That Proves That You Are In The Right?

The Idea Really Came To Me The Day I Got My New False Teeth.

From The Proletarians Nothing Is To Be Feared. Left To Themselves, They Will Continue From Generation To Generation And From Century To Century, Working, Breeding, And Dying, Not Only Without Any Impulse To Rebel, But Without The Power Of Grasping That The World Could Be Other Than It Is.

We May Find In The Long Run That Tinned Food Is A Deadlier Weapon Than The Machine-gun.

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.

Freedom Is The Freedom To Say That Two Plus Two Make Four. If That Is Granted, All Else Follows.

To A Surprising Extent The War-lords In Shining Armour, The Apostles Of Martial Virtues, Tend Not To Die Fighting When Time Comes. History Is Full Of Ignominious Getaways By The Great And Famous.

The Relative Freedom Which We Enjoy Depends Of Public Opinion. The Law Is No Protection. Governments Make Laws, But Whether They Are Carried Out, And How The Police Behave, Depends On The General Temper In The Country. If Large Numbers Of People Are Interested In Freedom Of Speech, There Will Be Freedom Of Speech, Even If The Law Forbids It; If Public Opinion Is Sluggish, Inconvenient Minorities Will Be Persecuted, Even If Laws Exist To Protect Them.

If There Really Is Such A Thing As Turning In One's Grave, Shakespeare Must Get A Lot Of Exercise.

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.

The Real Division Is Not Between Conservatives And Revolutionaries But Between Authoritarians And Libertarians.

The War Is Waged Against Its Own Subjects And Its Object Is Not The Victory...but To Keep The Very Structure Of Society Intact.

Now I Will Tell You The Answer To My Question. It Is This. The Party Seeks Power Entirely For Its Own Sake. We Are Not Interested In The Good Of Others; We Are Interested Solely In Power, Pure Power.

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

Telling The Truth

Political Writing In Our Time Consists Almost Entirely Of Prefabricated Phrases Bolted Together Like The Pieces Of A Child's Meccano Set. It Is The Unavoidable Result Of Self-censorship. To Write In Plain, Vigorous Language One Has To Think Fearlessly, And If One Thinks Fearlessly One Cannot Be Politically Orthodox.

I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

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

Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing.

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

I Had Been In London Innumerable Times, And Yet Till That Day I Had Never Noticed One Of The Worst Things About London-the Fact That It Costs Money Even To Sit Down.

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

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

The Planting Of A Tree, Especially One Of The Long-living Hardwood Trees, Is A Gift Which You Can Make To Posterity At Almost No Cost And With Almost No Trouble, And If The Tree Takes Root It Will Far Outlive The Visible Effect Of Any Of Your Other Actions, Good Or Evil.

Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.

It [england] Is A Family In Which The Young Are Generally Thwarted And Most Of The Power Is In The Hands Of Irresponsible Uncles And Bedridden Aunts.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Wish To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings. If One Could Follow It To Its Psychological Roots, One Would, I Believe, Find That The Main Motive For "non-attachment" Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal Without Cause.

Each Generation Imagines Itself To Be More Intelligent Than The One That Went Before It, And Wiser Than The One That Comes After It.

The Weariness Of The Cell Is The Vigour Of The Organism.

No Man Should Be Allowed To Be The President Who Does Not Understand Hogs, Or Hasn't Been Around A Manure Pile.

Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking

The Problem Was How To Keep The Wheels Of Industry Turning Without Increasing The Real Wealth Of The World. Goods Must Be Produced, But They Must Not Be Distributed. And In Practice The Only Way Of Achieving This Was By Continuous Warfare.

By Revolution We Become More Ourselves, Not Less.

If I Had To Make A List Of Six Books Which Were To Be Preserved When All Others Were Destroyed, I Would Certainly Put Gulliver's Travels Among Them.

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

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

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.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule, Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils.

The Result Of This Is That So-called Peace Propaganda Is Just As Dishonest And Intellectually Disgusting As War Propaganda. Like War Propaganda, It Concentrates On Putting Forward A ‘case’, Obscuring The Opponent’s Point Of View And Avoiding Awkward Questions.

The Totalitarian States Can Do Great Things, But There Is One Thing They Cannot Do: They Cannot Give The Factory-worker A Rifle And Tell Him To Take It Home And Keep It In His Bedroom. That Rifle, Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Laborer's Cottage, Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear.

The Energy That Actually Shapes The World Springs From Emotions - Racial Pride, Leader-worship, Religious Belief, Love Of War - Which Liberal Intellectuals Mechanically Write Off As Anachronisms, And Which They Have Usually Destroyed So Completely In Themselves As To Have Lost All Power Of Action.

In The Past The Need For A Hierarchal Form Of Society Has Been The Doctrine Specifically Of The High. It Had Been Preached By Kings And Aristocrats And The Priests, Lawyers And The Like Who Were Parasitical Upon Them, And It Had Generally Been Softened By Promises Of An Imaginary World Beyond The Grave.

There Are Some Ideas So Wrong That Only A Very Intelligent Person Could Believe In Them.

...every Human Being Is Doomed To Die, Which Is The Greatest Of All Failures.

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.

Even The Humblest Party Member Is Expected To Be Competent, Industrious, And Even Intelligent Within Narrow Limits, But It Is Also Necessary That He Should Be A Credulous And Ignorant Fanatic Whose Prevailing Moods Are Fear, Hatred, Adulation, And Orgiastic Triumph. In Other Words It Is Necessary That He Should Have The Mentality Appropriate To A State Of War. It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Actually Happening, And, Since No Decisive Victory Is Possible, It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Going Well Or Badly. All That Is Needed Is That A State Of War Should Exist.

Don't You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? Has It Ever Occurred To You, Winston, That By The Year 2050, At The Very Latest, Not A Single Human Being Will Be Alive Who Could Understand Such A Conversation As We Are Having Now?

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

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

Progress Is Not An Illusion, It Happens, But It Is Slow And Invariably Disappointing.

Winston Was Gelatinous With Fatigue.

So Long As I Remain Alive And Well I Shall Continue To Feel Strongly About Prose Style, To Love The Surface Of The Earth, And To Take A Pleasure In Solid Objects And Scraps Of Useless Information.

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

Let's Face It: Our Lives Are Miserable, Laborious, And Short.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent, But The Tests That Have To Be Applied To Them Are Not, Of Course, The Same In All Cases.

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

Reality Is Inside The Skull.

She Had Had Her Momentary Flowering, A Year, Perhaps, Of Wildrose Beauty, And Then She Had Suddenly Swollen Like A Fertilized Fruit And Grown Hard And Red And Coarse, And Then Her Life Had Been Laundering, Scrubbing, Laundering, First For Children, Then For Grandchildren, Over Thirty Years. At The End Of It She Was Still Singing.

When I Sit Down To Write A Book, I Do Not Say To Myself, 'i Am Going To Produce A Work Of Art.' I Write It Because There Is Some Lie That I Want To Expose, Some Fact To Which I Want To Draw Attention, And My Initial Concern Is To Get A Hearing.

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.

You Are A Slow Learner, Winston." "how Can I Help It? How Can I Help But See What Is In Front Of My Eyes? Two And Two Are Four." "sometimes, Winston. Sometimes They Are Five. Sometimes They Are Three. Sometimes They Are All Of Them At Once. You Must Try Harder. It Is Not Easy To Become Sane.

Using The Word ‘political’ In The Widest Possible Sense. Desire To Push The World In A Certain Direction, To Alter Other Peoples’ Idea Of The Kind Of Society That They Should Strive After. Once Again, No Book Is Genuinely Free From Political Bias. The Opinion That Art Should Have Nothing To Do With Politics Is Itself A Political Attitude.

It Was With The Last Revolution And The Coming Of Ingsoc (inglish/english Socialism) That The Latest High Learnt How To Keep Their Position Permanently - By Cultivating Ignorance Among The Other Classes And By Constantly Surveying Them Through The Thought Police. Part Of This Strategy Included The Maintenance Of A State Of Continual Warfare, Which Goldstein Discussed In The Third Chapter. The Three Major Powers Were Not Fighting This Perpetual War For Victory; They Were Fighting To Keep A State Of Emergency Always Present As The Surest Guarantee Of Authoritarianism.

You Were The Dead; Theirs Was The Future.

How Right The Working Classes Are In Their "materialism." How Right They Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

As A Rule They Will Refuse Even To Sample A Foreign Dish, They Regard Such Things As Garlic And Olive Oil With Disgust, Life Is Unliveable To Them Unless They Have Tea And Puddings.

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.

To Walk Through The Ruined Cities Of Germany Is To Feel An Actual Doubt About The Continuity Of Civilization.

We Have Now Sunk To A Depth At Which Restatement Of The Obvious Is The First Duty Of Intelligent Men.

It Was Not The Man's Brain That Was Speaking; It Was His Larynx.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

But What Is Work And What Is Not Work? Is It Work To Dig, To Carpenter, To Plant Trees, To Fell Trees, To Ride, To Fish, To Hunt, To Feed Chickens, To Play The Piano, To Take Photographs, To Build A House, To Cook, To Sew, To Trim Hats, To Mend Motor Bicycles? All Of These Things Are Work To Somebody, And All Of Them Are Play To Somebody. There Are In Fact Very Few Activities Which Cannot Be Classed Either As Work Or Play According As You Choose To Regard Them.

It's A Wonderful Feeling To Have A Niece Like You Because You Are Always So Dear You Are So Dear No Matter The Year But All Throughout Each Day Of The Year There Could Hardly Be A Town In The South Of England Where You Could Throw A Brick Without Hitting The Niece Of A Bishop.

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

The Enemies Of Intellectual Liberty Always Try To Present Their Case As A Plea For Discipline Versus Individualism. The Issue Truth-versus-untruth Is As Far As Possible Kept In The Background.

In A Time Of Universal Deceit - Telling The Truth Is A Revolutionary Act.

I Doubt Whether Classical Education Ever Has Been Or Can Be Successfully Carried Out Without Corporal Punishment.

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

The Smell Of Her Hair, The Taste Of Her Mouth, The Feeling Of Her Skin Seemed To Have Got Inside Him, Or Into The Air All Round Him. She Had Become A Physical Necessity.

In A Way, The World-view Of The Party Imposed Itself Most Successfully On People Incapable Of Understanding It. 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. By Lack Of Understanding They Remained Sane. They Simply Swallowed Everything, And What They Swallowed Did Them No Harm, Because It Left No Residue Behind, Just As A Grain Of Corn Will Pass Undigested Through The Body Of A Bird.

It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.

Manchester Is The Belly And Guts Of The Nation

He Loved Big Brother.

There Is No Test Of Literary Merit Except Survival, Which Is Itself An Index To Majority Opinion.

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.

Take Pleasure In The Impact Of One Sound On Another.

The One Certain Thing Was That Death Never Came At An Expected Moment.

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

In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One. At One Time It Had Been A Sign Of Madness To Believe That The Earth Goes Round The Sun; Today, To Believe The Past Is Inalterable. He Might Be Alone In Holding That Belief, And If Alone, Then A Lunatic. But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

When You Make Love You're Using Up Energy; And Afterwards You Feel Happy And Don't Give A Damn For Anything. They Can't Bear You To Feel Like That. They Want You To Be Bursting With Energy All The Time. All This Marching Up And Down And Cheering And Waving Flags Is Simply Sex Gone Sour. If You're Happy Inside Yourself, Why Should You Get Excited About Big Brother And The Three-year Plans And The Two Minutes Hate And All The Rest Of Their Bloody Rot?

Every Record Has Been Destroyed Or Falsified, Every Book Has Been Rewritten, Every Picture Has Been Repainted, Every Statue And Street Building Has Been Renamed, Every Date Has Been Altered. And That Process Is Continuing Day Be Day And Minute By Minute. History Has Stopped. Nothing Exists Except The Endless Present In Which The Party Is Always Right.

But The Problems Of Perpetuating A Hierarchical Society Go Deeper Than This. There Are Only Four Ways In Which A Ruling Group Can Fall From Power. Either It Is Conquered From Without, Or It Governs So Inefficiently That The Masses Are Stirred To Revolt, Or It Allows A Strong And Discontented Middle Group To Come Into Being, Or It Loses Its Own Self-confidence And Willingness To Govern.

Self Confidence

The Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil, And It Followed That Any Past Or Future Agreement With Him Was Impossible.

All Left-wing Parties In The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something Which They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. They Have Internationalist Aims, And At The Same Time They Struggle To Keep Up A Standard Of Life With Which Those Aims Are Incompatible. We All Live By Robbing Asiatic Coolies, And Those Of Us Who Are 'enlightened' All Maintain That Those Coolies Ought To Be Set Free; But Our Standard Of Living, And Hence Our 'enlightenment,' Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue.

Do You Remember Writing In Your Diary," He Said, "that It Did Not Matter Whether I Was A Friend Or An Enemy, Since I Was At Least A Person Who Understood You And Could Be Talked To? You Were Right. I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous.

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.

One Has To Belong To The Intelligentsia To Believe Things Like That: No Ordinary Man Could Be Such A Fool.

The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon.

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.

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

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.

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

Despotic Governments Can Stand 'moral Force' Till The Cows Come Home; What They Fear Is Physical Force.

It Is Not Possible For Any Thinking Person To Live In Such A Society As Our Own Without Wanting To Change It.

Thinking Person

They Were Governed By Private Loyalties Which They Did Not Question. What Mattered Were Individual Relationships, And A Completely Helpless Gesture, An Embrace, A Tear, A Word Spoken To A Dying Man, Could Have Value In Itself

All Through My Boyhood I Had A Profound Conviction That I Was No Good, That I Was Wasting My Time, Wrecking My Talents, Behaving With Monstrous Folly And Wickedness And Ingratitude-and All This, It Seemed, Was Inescapable, Because I Lived Among Laws Which Were Absolute, Like The Law Of Gravity, But Which It Was Not Possible For Me To Keep.

The Birds Sang, The Proles Sang. The Party Did Not Sing. All Round The World, In London And New York, In Africa And Brazil, And In The Mysterious, Forbidden Lands Beyond The Frontiers, In The Streets Of Paris And Berlin, In The Villages Of The Endless Russian Plain, In The Bazaars Of China And Japan — Everywhere Stood The Same Solid Unconquerable Figure, Made Monstrous By Work And Childbearing, Toiling From Birth To Death And Still Singing.

Being In A Minority, Even In A Minority Of One, Did Not Make You Mad. There Was Truth And There Was Untruth, And If You Clung To The Truth Even Against The Whole World, You Were Not Mad.

The Whole Experience Of Being Hit By A Bullet Is Very Interesting And I Think Worth Describing In Detail.

I Know It Is The Fashion To Say That Most Of Recorded History Is Lies Anyway. I Am Willing To Believe That History Is For The Most Part Inaccurate And Biased, But What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Truthfully Written.

It Is The Same In All Wars; The Soldiers Do The Fighting, The Journalists Do The Shouting, And No True Patriot Ever Gets Near A Front-line Trench, Except On The Briefest Of Propaganda Tours.

It Was Curious To Think That The Sky Was The Same For Everybody, In Eurasia Or Eastasia As Well As Here. And The People Under The Sky Were Also Very Much The Same--everywhere, All Over The World, Hundreds Or Thousands Of Millions Of People Just Like This, People Ignorant Of One Another's Existence, Held Apart By Walls Of Hatred And Lies, And Yet Almost Exactly The Same--people Who Had Never Learned To Think But Were Storing Up In Their Hearts And Bellies And Muscles The Power That Would One Day Overturn The World.

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me: There Lie They, And Here Lie We Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

The Words Kept Coming Back To Him, Statement Of A Mystical Truth And A Palpable Absurdity.

The Ruling Power Is Always Faced With The Question, ‘in Such And Such Circumstances, What Would You Do?’, Whereas The Opposition Is Not Obliged To Take Responsibility Or Make Any Real Decisions.

In Certain Kinds Of Writing, Particularly In Art Criticism And Literary Criticism, It Is Normal To Come Across Long Passages Which Are Almost Completely Lacking In Meaning.

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

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

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality.

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

Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache... Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.

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

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

A Hierarchical Society Is Only Possible On The Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance, This New Version Is The Past And No Different Past Can Ever Have Existed. In Principle The War Effort Is Always Planned To Keep Society On The Brink Of Starvation. The War Is Waged By The Ruling Group Against Its Own Subjects And Its Object Is Not The Victory Over Either Eurasia Or East Asia But To Keep The Very Structure Of Society Intact.

To The Future Or To The Past, To A Time When Thought Is Free, When Men Are Different From One Another And Do Not Live Alone— To A Time When Truth Exists And What Is Done Cannot Be Undone: From The Age Of Uniformity, From The Age Of Solitude, From The Age Of Big Brother, From The Age Of Doublethink — Greetings!

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

The Very Concept Of Objective Truth Is Fading Out Of The World. Lies Will Pass Into History.

Trending Author

Taylor Caldwell

Category