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"All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth."
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"Torturing innocents, murdering civilians and destroying public property; they are all the gifts we have been given by religion."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Some lurid things have been said about me-that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth-that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin."
Author Name
Personal Development
"We know of no spectacle more ridiculous-or more contemptible-than that of the religious reactionaries who dare to re-write the history of our republic. Or who try to do so. Is it possible that, in their vanity and stupidity, they suppose that they can erase the name of Thomas Jefferson and replace it with the name of some faith-based mediocrity whose name is already obscure? If so, we cheerfully resolve to mock them, and to give them the lie in their teeth."
Author Name
Personal Development
"All around us were people I had spent ten years avoiding--shapeless women in wool bathing suits, dull-eyed men with hairless legs and self-conscious laughs, all Americans, all fearsomely alike. These people should be kept at home, I thought; lock them in the basement of some goddamn Elks Club and keep them pacified with erotic movies; if they want a vacation, show them a foreign art film; and if they still aren't satisfied, send them into the wilderness and run them with vicious dogs."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Hater" and "hate" are used when no critical thought can be formed. We can definitely do better."
Author Name
Personal Development
"If [literature] should turn into pure propaganda or pure entertainment, society will slip back into the sty of the immediate -- which is to say, the memoryless existence of hymenoptera and gastropods. None of this is so important, to be sure. The world can get by nicely without literature. But without human beings it can get by better yet."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Religion is based on the idea that God is an imbecile."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Only a man of knowledge is capable of giving constructive criticism."
Author Name
Personal Development
"Oh, mankind, race of crocodiles! How well I recognize you down there, and how worthy you are of yourselves!"
Author Name
Personal Development
"In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the coloured peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals-and managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies')."
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"Ambition is not a vice of little people."
People
"In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum."
Education
"Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face."
Age
"He who does not live in some degree for others hardly lives for himself."
Philosophy
"Wit is a dangerous weapon, even to the possessor, if he knows not how to use it discreetly."
Caution
"I quote others in order to better express my own self."
Inspirational
"Excellent memories are often coupled with feeble judgments."
Reflection
"It is not reasonable that art should win the place of honor over our great and powerful mother Nature. We have so overloaded the beauty and richness of her works by our inventions that we have quite smothered her."
Art
"If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it."
Nature
"The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will."
Life
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