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Some of my favorite quotes of his: “[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a re

Some of my favorite quotes of his: “[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” George Orwell (31 December 1943) “Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.” “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.” “The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.” “The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.” “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. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands.” I guess welcome to the age of schizophrenia. For those who are interested, his membership of the Fabian Society is key to understanding how he was so spot on about today's world (eg: planned). Wolf in sheeps clothing indeed. https://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=FabianSociety&C=2.0 https://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?Article=FabianSociety&C...

geye1234 3y ago
"All propaganda is a lie, even when it is telling the truth" "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." "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 is sometimes a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is changing the conditions of warfare. In the next great war, we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him." "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." I strongly recommend the four-volume Penguin edition of his collected journalism and essays.
zer00eyz 3y ago
“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” George Orwell (31 December 1943) This holds NO candle the the candor of Robert McNamara talking about fire bombing Japan in WWII. If you have never seen "fog of war" the documentary interview of him go and see it. The context of "McNamara's Morons" and forest Gump is lost on so many...
nortonham 3y ago
>“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” George Orwell (31 December 1943) That's a neat quote. I wonder what Orwell thought of the manufactured famines in Ireland and India, or the British East India Company going to war with China so they make them purchase opium.

geye1234 3y ago

"All propaganda is a lie, even when it is telling the truth" "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it." "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 is sometimes a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is changing the conditions of warfare. In the next great war, we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him." "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." "To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." I strongly recommend the four-volume Penguin edition of his collected journalism and essays.

zer00eyz 3y ago

“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” George Orwell (31 December 1943) This holds NO candle the the candor of Robert McNamara talking about fire bombing Japan in WWII. If you have never seen "fog of war" the documentary interview of him go and see it. The context of "McNamara's Morons" and forest Gump is lost on so many...

nortonham 3y ago

>“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” George Orwell (31 December 1943) That's a neat quote. I wonder what Orwell thought of the manufactured famines in Ireland and India, or the British East India Company going to war with China so they make them purchase opium.