George Orwell on the pretense for war

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.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on "films, football, beer and gambling"

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.  Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...  Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.  To keep them in control was not difficult...  All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.  And when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show
February 13, 2022

George Orwell on gun control

That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy.  It is our job to see that it stays there. 

~ George Orwell

(The photo below was taken by Dennis Call: "I love to wander the backroads of Texas.  It may never get completed, but I am putting together a coffee-table book called "Driving Texas."  It is a picture book of places/sights/only in Texas and other items of interest.")

"Only in Texas!"

George Orwell on war propaganda

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on love

They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on denial of truth

However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on progressivism

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on falsifying history

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell anticipates the political Left circa 2021

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.  What pure power means you will understand presently.  We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing.  All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.  The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.  We are not like that.  We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  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.  Now you begin to understand me.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on journalism

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on totalitarianism, force and fraud

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.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on media spin

The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell anticipates politically correct speech codes

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?  In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on threats to freedom of speech

Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on indoctrination

These two had great difficulty in thinking anything out for themselves, but having once accepted the pigs as their teachers, they absorbed everything that they were told, and passed it on to the other animals by simple arguments.

~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

George Orwell on ideas and intellectuals

There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them; no ordinary man could be such a fool.

~ George Orwell

George Watson on George Orwell's views of capitalism vs. socialism in 1940

By the outbreak of world war in 1939 the idea that Hitler was any sort of socialist was almost wholly dead. One may salute here an odd but eminent exception. Writing as a committed socialist just after the fall of France in 1940, in The Lion and the Unicorn, Orwell saw the disaster as a "physical debunking of capitalism", it showed once and for all that "a planned economy is stronger than a planless one", though he was in no doubt that Hitler's victory was a tragedy for France and for mankind. The planned economy had long stood at the head of socialist demands; and National Socialism, Orwell argued, had taken from socialism "just such features as will make it efficient for war purposes". Hitler had already come close to socialising Germany. "Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a socialist state." These words were written just before Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union. Orwell believed that Hitler would go down in history as "the man who made the City of London laugh on the wrong side of its face" by forcing financiers to see that planning works and that an economic free-for-all does not.

~ George Watson, "Hitler and the Socialist Dream," Independent, November 22, 1998

George Orwell on the future

If you want to picture the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.  Power is not a means, it is an end.

George Orwell, 1984

(Addendum: In posting this quote and photo, I rushed to judgment along with the mob, viewing the events through my own ideological lens.  For an alternative view on what likely caused the death of George Floyd - drug overdose - see here.)

Minneapolis police officer kills George Floyd

George Orwell on the real political spectrum

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.

~ George Orwell

George Orwell on the importance of history

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

~ George Orwell, 1984