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“I have tried to write objectively about the Barcelona fighting, though, obviously, no one can be completely objective on a question of this kind. One is practically obliged to take sides, and it must be clear enough which side I am on. Again, I must inevitably have made mistakes of fact, not only here but in other parts of this narrative. It is very difficult to write accurately about the Spanish war, because of the lack of non-propagandist documents. I warn everyone against my bias, and I warn everyone against my mistakes. Still, I have done my best to be honest.”

WarHonestyHumilityBiasOrwellHomage To Catalonia
Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“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.”

WarClassDemocracySocietyComrade
Book:Fighting in Spain
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“If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however ofter Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.”

WarIgnoranceRacismHatredBigotry
Book:1984
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“The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …”

WarAnti WarPacifism
Author:George Orwell
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“They laid me down again while somebody fetched a stretcher. As soon as I knew that the bullet had gone clean through my neck I took it for granted that I was done for. I had never heard of a man or an animal getting a bullet through the middle of the neck and surviving it. The blood was dribbling out of the comer of my mouth. ‘The artery's gone,’ I thought. I wondered how long you last when your carotid artery is cut; not many minutes, presumably. Everything was very blurry. There must have been about two minutes during which I assumed that I was killed. And that too was interesting—I mean it is interesting to know what your thoughts would be at such a time. My first thought, conventionally enough, was for my wife. My second was a violent resentment at having to leave this world which, when all is said and done, suits me so well. I had time to feel this very vividly. The stupid mischance infuriated me. The meaninglessness of it! To be bumped off, not even in battle, but in this stale comer of the trenches, thanks to a moment's carelessness! I thought, too, of the man who had shot me—wondered what he was like, whether he was a Spaniard or a foreigner, whether he knew he had got me, and so forth. I could not feel any resentment against him. I reflected that as he was a Fascist I would have killed him if I could, but that if he had been taken prisoner and brought before me at this moment I would merely have congratulated him on his good shooting. It may be, though, that if you were really dying your thoughts would be quite different.”

WarDeath And DyingCasualty Of War
Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact.”

War
Book:1984
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“I suppose there hasn’t been a single month since the war, in any trade you care to name, in which there weren’t more men than jobs. It’s brought a peculiar, ghastly feeling into life. It’s like on a sinking ship when there are nineteen survivors and fourteen lifebelts. But is there anything particularly modern in that, you say? Has it anything to do with the war? Well, it feels as if it had. The feeling that you’ve got to be everlastingly fighting and hustling, that you’ll never get anything unless you grab it from somebody else, that there’s always somebody after your job, that next month or the month after they’ll be reducing staff and it’s you that’ll get the bird – that, I swear, didn’t exist in the old life before the war.”

WarUnemployment
Book:Coming Up for Air
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“At any rate, spring is here, even in London N.1, and they can't stop you enjoying it. This is a satisfying reflection. How many a time have I stood watching the toads mating, or a pair of hares having a boxing match in the young corn, and thought of all the important persons who would stop me enjoying this if they could. But luckily they can’t. So long as you are not actually ill, hungry, frightened or immured in a prison or a holiday camp, Spring is still Spring. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.”

LifeWarSpring
Book:Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
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“I did not make any of the correct political reflections. I never do when things are happening. It seems to be always the case when I get mixed up in war or politics. I am conscious of nothing save physical discomfort and a deep desire for this damn nonsense to be over. Afterwards I can see the significance of events but while they're happening I merely want to be out of them.”

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Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war is glorious after all.”

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Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“Two militiamen on leave, whom I had met my first week at the front, came in to see a wounded friend and recognized me. They were kids of about eighteen. They stood awkwardly beside my bed, trying to think of something to say, and then, as a way of demonstrating that they were sorry I was wounded, suddenly took all the tobacco out of their pockets, gave it to me, and fled before I could give it back. How typically Spanish! I discovered afterwards that you could not buy tobacco anywhere in the town and what they had given me was a week's ration.”

WarSpaniardsSpanish People
Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“Spinse lo sguardo su e giù per la strada priva di grazia. E in quel momento gli parve che in una strada come quella, in una città come quella, ogni vita che vi si vive debba essere senza significato e intollerabile. Il senso di disintegrazione, di decadenza, endemico del nostro tempo, divenne incombente. In certo qual modo aveva a che fare coi cartelloni pubblicitari dall’altra parte della strada. Fissò ora con occhi ancor più veggenti quelle facce sogghignanti d’un metro di larghezza. Dopo tutto, c’era qualcosa di più che semplice vacuità, ingordigia e banalità su quelle facce. Tavolo d’Angolo vi sorride, un sorriso apparentemente ottimistico, con un lampeggiar di denti falsi. Ma che cosa si nasconde dietro quel sorriso? Desolazione, vuoto, profezie di sciagure. Ché non vedete, se sappiate guardare, come dietro quella soddisfazione e quella contentezza imbellettate, sotto quella banalità panciuta e ridacchiante, non ci sia altro che un terribile vuoto, una disperazione segreta? L’immenso desiderio di morte del mondo moderno. Patti suicidi. Teste ficcate nel forno a gas in solitarie villette. Anticoncezionali e stupefacenti. E le premonizioni di guerre future. Aerei nemici in volo su Londra; il sonoro, minaccioso ronzar delle eliche, il rombo dirompente delle bombe. È tutto scritto sulla faccia di Tavolo d’Angolo.”

WarSocietyAdsGuerraModern SocietyOrwellPubblicità
Book:Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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“it is somehow typical of Spain—of the flashes of magnanimity that you get from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances. I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards. I only twice remember even being seriously angry with a Spaniard, and on each occasion, when I look back, I believe I was in the wrong myself. They have, there is no doubt, a generosity, a species of nobility, that do not really belong to the twentieth century.”

WarSpainOrwellCatalonia
Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“The Spaniards are good at many things, but not at making war. All foreigners alike are appalled by their inefficiency, above all their maddening unpunctuality. The one Spanish word that no foreigner can avoid learning is mañana — ‘tomorrow’ (literally, ‘the morning’). Whenever it is conceivably possible, the business of today is put off until mañana. This is so notorious that even the Spaniards themselves make jokes about it. In Spain nothing, from a meal to a battle, ever happens at the appointed time. As a general rule things happen too late, but just occasionally — just so that you shan't even be able to depend on their happening late — they happen too early. A train which is due to leave at eight will normally leave at any time between nine and ten, but perhaps once a week, thanks to some private whim of the engine-driver, it leaves at half past seven. Such things can be a little trying. In theory I rather admire the Spaniards for not sharing our Northern time-neurosis; but unfortunately I share it myself.”

WarTimeSpanishOrwellCataloniaMañana
Book:Homage to Catalonia
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“As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of the machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare, which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch. ... The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way.”

WarEducationSocietyMoraleMassesOverprotection
Book:1984
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“From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that the State is themselves. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices that are ahead of us, war or no war.”

WarSocialismCollectivismDemocratic SocialismDying For Your CountrySounds Drab
Book:The Lion and The Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius
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“The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenants of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous, outrageous upon morality and common sense. Actually, the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship or the semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that three super states not only cannot conquer one another but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up like three sheaves of corn, and as usual, the ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing. Their lives are dedicated to world conquest but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory.”

WarHateFearImmigrantsForeigners1984Orwellian
Book:Nineteen Eighty-Four
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“In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, "just to keep the people frightened."”

PeopleWayWarGovernmentPartyOpinionHappenedHappeningsConnectionsLondonPropagandaBombsFrightenedRocketsSusceptibleOceania
Book:1984
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“The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil; or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.”

WorldHumansTwoWarHandsChoicesEvilHuman BeingsCleanGood And EvilYou ChooseNaziTwo EvilsClean Hands
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel.:; Up to 1914 you did not need a passport for any country except Russia.:; The European emigrant, if he could scrape together a few pounds for the passage, simply set sail for America or Australia, and when he got there no questions were asked.:; In the eighteenth century it had been quite normal and safe to travel in a country with which your own country was at war.”

IfsWorldNeedsWarCountryTogetherAmericaCenturySafeNormalRussiaAustraliaPoundsPassagesSailRestrictionNineteenth CenturyPassportsUnexplored
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945
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“As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool - and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler.”

ThinkingWorldIdeasWarAbleTreeSeaModernQuietSittingRiversFishesRadioBoatLakesFishingPoolModern WorldAeroplanesWillow Trees
Book:Coming Up for Air
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“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned ... -- imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

PeopleLongWarWholeUseCommonPracticeSlavePopulationTrialsTortureEnlightenedProgressivePrisonerAbandonedConfessionExecutionOutlookImprisonmentHostageDeportationIgnorance In 1984
Book:1984
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“A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

DifferentWarPastEffortPrinciplesPovertyGroupsSubjectsObjectsIgnoranceVictoryBasesStructureEastVersionsAsiaRulingStarvationEast Asia
Author:George Orwell
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“The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.”

WorldWritingWarActionBeliefEnergyLostReligiousEmotionLeaderPrideShapesWorshipSpringDestroyedReligious BeliefAnachronism
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.”

MenWorldWantHumansHeartWarUsePoliticalOrderHuman BeingsSecretStruggleAirPrisonCivil WarParadiseLove One AnotherHeart BreakingPolitical StruggleGestapoSwindling
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

GivingWarTruthPoliticalLyingPoliticsLanguagePeaceSoundWindPoliticianPureMurderWittyAppearanceThriveTruthfulPolitical PartiesRespectableMaking PeacePeace And JusticePeace JusticeBeing TruthfulMake Peace Not WarCitizenryPolitical WillSolidityKnowledge And PowerPoliticians And PoliticsLanguage WordsPolitical LanguageAnti PoliticalBest PoliticalFalse Appearances
Author:George Orwell
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