George Orwell
Born on this day in 1903.
Quotes:
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. 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.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
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.
Speaking of cuttlefish, there’s this other George…
“The march to war affected the people’s confidence. It’s hard to make investment. See, if you’re a small business owner or a large business owner and you’re thinking about investing, you’ve got to be optimistic when you invest. Except when you’re marching to war, it’s not a very optimistic thought, is it? In other words, it’s the opposite of optimistic when you’re thinking you’re going to war.” – George W. Bush, February 2004
