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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."
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"The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart."

"The financial elite already have the politicians in their pockets, as a result of their lobbying."

"Politics should be a field that attracts statesmen, not future CEO's and board members."

"In reality, commissions rarely solve complicated problems. Therefore, the following question arises: what is worse " to establish a commission knowing it cannot solve a complicated problem, or to believe that the commission will truly solve such a problem?"

"The bureaucrat is a man who administers things and people, and who relates himself to people as to things."

"An assembly is extra slow in taking actions."

"Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is, it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of the government."

"Any nation that teaches and make there people look for miracles are making their people weak."

"A statesman who is enamored of existing evils as distin-quished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others."

"When a religious system or a government organizes into a bureaucracy, it is the bureaucracy that incessantly moves all activities increasingly and inevitably towards it's own destruction. The momentum will always become greater than the influence of it's wisest members."
Explore more quotes by George Orwell

"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name."

"We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness," O'Brien had said to him. He knew what it meant, or thought he knew. The place where there is no darkness was the imagined future, which one would never see, but which, by foreknowledge, one could mystically share in."

"Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives but on balance life is suffering and only the very sound or the very foolish imagine otherwise."

"Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself."

"He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone - one mind less, one world less."

"It is impossible to read through the reports in the Communist Press without realizing that they are consciously aimed at a public ignorant of the facts and have no other purpose than to work up prejudice."

"And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."
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