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Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

Authority, Control, Power, Resistance, Society

Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come

Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come

Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come

George Orwell’s Quotes On Topics

Resistance | Sanity | Friendship | Intellectuals | Doublethink | Reform | Understanding | Alienation | Fascism | Intolerance | Human Condition | Struggles | City Life | Law | Failure | Dictatorship | Beauty | Generational Issues | Work | Resignation | More

More George Orwell Quotes

“Perhaps “friend” was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.”

Friendship, Comradeship, Society, Trust, Isolation

“Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.”

Patriotism, Conservatism, Identity, Change, Society

“There is a word in Newspeak,’ said Syme, ‘I don’t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise.”

Language, Newspeak, Contradiction, Communication, Ideology

“I do not think the Socialist need make any sacrifice of essentials, but certainly he will have to make a great sacrifice of externals. It would help enormously, for instance, if the smell of crankishness which still clings to the Socialist movement could be dispelled. If only the sandals and the pistachio-coloured shirts could be put in a pile and burnt, and every vegetarian, teetotaller and creeping Jesus sent home to Welwyn Garden City to do his yoga exercises quietly!”

Socialism, Image, Ideology, Critique, Society

“Hunger reduces one to an utterly spineless, brainless condition, more like the after-effects of influenza than anything else. It is as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and lukewarm water substituted.”

Hunger, Dehumanization, Vulnerability, Survival, Condition

“Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.”

Opinion, Conformity, Society, Law, Intolerance

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

Pain, Suffering, Humanity, Heroism, Reality

“Cricket is a game full of forlorn hopes and sudden dramatic changes of fortune, and its rules are so ill-defined that their interpretation is partly an ethical business.”

Cricket, Hope, Fortune, Ethics, Uncertainty

“One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.”

Love, Parenthood, Emotion, Assumption, Relationships

“When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist – after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.”

War, Fascism, Resistance, Ideology, Action

“Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.”

Nostalgia, Peace, War, Memory, Change

“A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything.”

Progress, Pain, Humanity, Society, Emotion

“If you have no money, men won’t care for you, women won’t love you; won’t, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.”

Wealth, Love, Society, Relationships, Materialism

“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.”

Power, Control, Authority, Self-Interest, Corruption

“In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all.”

Failure, Life, Perspective, Acceptance, Reality

“I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.”

Liberty, Sacrifice, Reality, Struggle, Freedom

“The food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in the hopes of adding five years onto the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity.”

Isolation, Health, Society, Extremism, Humanity

“If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?”

Creed, Politics, Morality, Belief, Integrity

“It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important. What counts is that we don’t betray each other.”

Humanity, Loyalty, Survival, Betrayal, Morality

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

Power, Control, Mind, Manipulation, Authority