Quotes About Society

Los altos quieren quedarse donde están; los medianos quieren arrebatarle su puesto a los altos; los bajos quieren abolir todas las distinciones y crear una sociedad en la que todos sean iguales.

Sanity was statistical.

En una época de engaño universal, decir la verdad es un acto revolucionario.»

Since that time, war had literally been continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war.

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because they have no intellect.

Public opinion is less tolerant than any system of law.

But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on despairing of life in to a ripe old age. One cannot go on being decadent, since decadence means falling and one can only said to be falling if one is going to reach the bottom reasonably soon. Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive attitude toward life and society.

Una paz que fuera de verdad permanente sería lo mismo que una guerra permanente. Este es el sentido verdadero de la consigna del Partido: la guerra es la paz.

inequality was the unalterable law of human life.

Below that are the proles, numbering perhaps eight-five per cent of the population. In terms of our earlier classification, the proles are the Low, for the slave population of the equatorial lands, who pass constantly from conqueror to conqueror, are not a permanent or necessary part of the structure.

In theory at any rate each militia was a democracy and not a hierarchy . It was understood that orders had to be obeyed, but it was also understood that when you gave an order you gave it as comrade to comrade and not as superior to inferior. There were officers and NCOs, but there was no military rank in the ordinary sense; not titles, no badges, no heel-clicking and saluting. They had attempted to produce within the militias a sort of temporary working model of the classless society.

It is impossible to found a civilisation on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view.

Waiters are seldom socialists.

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

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.

That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and for the bulk of mankind happiness was better.

Pân? nu devin comÈ™tienÈ›i, nu se vor r?zvr?ti È™i pân? nu se r?zvr?tesc, nu pot deveni conÈ™tienÈ›i" - 1984

If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

Antiguamente, las diferencias de clase no sólo habían sido inevitables, sino deseables. La desigualdad era el precio de la civilización.

And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn't born for an age like this; Was Smith? Was Jones? Were you?

Il y a partout la même structure pyramidale, le même culte d'un chef semi-divin, le même système économique existant par et pour une guerre continuelle.

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference.