"It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning."

Rating:

  rate this quote
Topic: none  help us select a topic for this quote

More quotes from: George Orwell

• "A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still ..."
• "Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket. "
• "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. "
• "All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can ..."
• "All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who ..."
• "At 50, everyone has the face he deserves. "
• "Big Brother is watching you. "
• "But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. "
• "But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb ..."
• "Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting ..."
• "Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a ..."
• "Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war ..."
• "For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity. "
• "Four legs good, two legs bad. "
• "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is ..."
• "Happiness can exist only in acceptance. "
• "He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve ..."
• "I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as ..."
• "If a man meets with injustice, it is not required that he shall not be ..."
• "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they ..."
• "If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness ..."
• "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human ..."
• "In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. "
• "In every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free ..."
• "In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues ..."
• "In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. "
• "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act. "
• "It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to ..."
• "Liberal: a power worshipper without power. "

• "Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he ..."
• "Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be. "
• "Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life ..."
• "Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance ..."
• "Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. "
• "No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought ..."
• "No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were ..."
• "Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the ..."
• "On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not ..."
• "One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but ..."
• "One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a ..."
• "One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense oversensitiveness which ..."
• "Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that ..."
• "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to ..."
• "Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some ..."
• "Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give ..."
• "Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening ..."
• "Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left ..."
• "Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It ..."
• "Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent. "
• "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, ..."
• "Serious sport is war minus the shooting. "
• "Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will ..."
• "Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. "
• "The best books... are those that tell you what you know already. "
• "The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both ..."
• "The crowds in the big towns, with their mild, knobby faces, their bad teeth and ..."
• "The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection. "

• "The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the ..."
• "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's ..."
• "The main motive for "nonattachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, ..."
• "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but ..."
• "The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he ..."
• "The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. "
• "The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass ..."
• "There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in ..."
• "There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference ..."
• "To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend ..."
• "To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some ..."
• "To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about ..."
• "War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going ..."
• "War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to ..."
• "War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to ..."
• "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. "
• "War is war. The only good human being is a dead one. "
• "We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the ..."
• "We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than ..."
• "We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class ..."
• "What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives ..."
• "Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke ..."
• "When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. "
• "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. "
• "Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. "
• "Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war. "