Quotes About Politics

A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.

it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones:

As time went on, the Communists and the POUM wrote more bitterly about one another than about the Fascists.

consciously or unconsciously everyone writes as a partisan.

In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish war have had any publicity to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian patriots versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and the Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair.

Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups who were on the point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted.

The attitude of the Indian millionaires was similar. Gandhi called upon them to repent, and naturally they preferred him to the Socialists and Communists who, given the chance, would actually have taken their money away.

Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakeably certain of being in the right.

In foreign politics many intellectuals follow the principle that any faction backed by Britain must be in the wrong. As a result, 'enlightened' opinion is quite largely a mirror-image of Conservative policy. Anglophobia is always liable to reversal, hence that fairly common spectacle, the pacifist of one war who is a bellicist in the next.

This process of con- tinuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs—to every kind of lit- erature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.

Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality. Now

There was a direct, intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. 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 even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

Todos los que sostienen esa postura no se dan cuenta de que, al apoyar los métodos totalitarios, llegará un momento en que esos métodos serán usados contra ellos y no por ellos. Haced una costumbre del encarcelamiento de fascistas sin juicio previo y tal vez este proceso no se limite solo a los fascistas.

Antigamente, pensou ele, um homem olhava um corpo de mulher, via que era desejável e pronto. Mas agora não era possível ter amor puro, ou pura lascívia. Não havia mais emoção pura; estava tudo misturado com medo e ódio. A união fôra uma batalha, o clímax uma vitória. Era um golpe desferido no Partido. Era um ato político.

In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old one was overthrown.

The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies 'something not desirable'.

It is a horrible thing to have to enter into the details of inter-party polemics; it is like diving into a cesspool.

What I have seen of our governing class does not convince me that they have that much intel- ligence.

People took politics seriously in those days. They used to begin storing up rotten eggs weeks before an election.

It's a queer thing, I thought, to be known as 'Mr So-and-so, the well-known anti-Fascist'. A queer trade, anti-Fascism.