Quotes About Society

the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth

Blake was not a politician, but there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem like "I wander through each charter'd street" than in three-quarters of Socialist literature.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

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.

Perché non gridavano mai così contro le cose che contavano?

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.

In our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane.

Like all other modern people, the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, 'coordinated'. But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction

But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of faith.

El resultado de predicar doctrinas totalitarias es que debilita el instinto que indica a las personas libres lo que es peligroso y lo que no.

Enquanto existirem sociedades organizadas, sempre deve existir, ou pelo menos sempre haverá de existir, algum grau de censura. (apêndices - George Orwell)

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

3.6.40: From a letter from Lady Oxford15 to the Daily Telegraph, on the subject of war economies: Since most London houses are deserted there is little entertaining ... in any case, most people have to part with their cooks and live in hotels. Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exist.

In Paris, if you had no money and could not find a public bench, you would sit on the pavement. Heaven knows what sitting on the pavement would lead to in London-prison probably.

I am sentimental about my childhood—not my own particular childhood, but the civilization which I grew up in and which is now, I suppose, just about at its last kick.

Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache.

Four legs good, two legs bad.' This, he said, contained the essential principle of Animalism.

As the Party slogan put it: 'Proles and animals are free.

Our civilisation is haunted by the notion that the quickest way of doing anything is invariably the best.

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war.

If there is any hope, it lies in the proles

You do not escape from money merely by being moneyless

England was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus