As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only doing their duty, as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never sleep any worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power to absolve him from evil. |
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents |
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. |
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves. |
Big Brother is watching you. |
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. |
But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit. |
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act |
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it |
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper |
England and the English 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 unlivable to them unless they have tea and puddings |
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility. |
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. |
For a creative writer possession of the ''truth'' is less important than emotional sincerity. |
For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him. |