Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
Tag: George Orwell
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.