Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
- Topic: Leadership, Society
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from George Orwell
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.
It is frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.
It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.
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Either you will control your government, or government will control you.
The greatest leader is not the the one who necessarily does the greatest things. He is the one who gets people to do the greatest things. He is
He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.
As leaders we are not only responsible for harvesting our own success, but for cultivating the success of the next generation.
The people turn to a benevolent rule as water flows downwards, and as wild beasts fly to the wilderness.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.
Racism must be opposed by all means that humanity has at its disposal.
We have more machinery of government that is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.
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The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.
We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.
God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: "This is my country."
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country.
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false.
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample underfoot. Men are no superior by reason of the accidents of race and color. The are superior who have the best heart—the best brain.
My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside all rules and demands of society.