{"quotes":[{"text":"Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not whol.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["boyhood","causes","childhood","christian-martyrs","christianity","comrades","conscription","death","fanaticism","friends","kamikaze","martyrdom","martyrs","masochism","memorials","november","orwell","patriotism","poppies","principles","religion","sacrifice","self-abnegation","self-importance","soldiers","suicide","suicide-attack","theocracy","torture","ugliness","war"],"id":11922,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["itarianism","orwell","russian-revolution","satire"],"id":14331,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["1984","big-brother","george","george-orwell","government","orwell"],"id":46286,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. Your life?","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["boyhood","causes","childhood","christian-martyrs","christianity","comrades","conscription","death","fanaticism","friends","kamikaze","martyrdom","martyrs","masochism","memorials","november","orwell","patriotism","poppies","principles","religion","sacrifice","self-abnegation","self-importance","soldiers","suicide","suicide-attack","theocracy","torture","ugliness","war"],"id":95133,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"What mattered was that the room over the junk-shop should exist. To know that it was there, inviolate, was almost the same as being in it. The room was a world, a pocket of the past where extinct animals could walk.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["1984","existence","matters","orwell"],"id":97062,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"Secrets are dangerous.” Gottfried Baumauer.","author":"Carla H. Krueger","tags":["adult-fiction","anti-utopia","bad-manager","carla-krueger","comedy","contemporary","dark","humor","humour","office-politics","office-worker","orwell","poison","psychological","quick-read","short-book","short-story","subversive","twisted"],"id":114365,"author_id":"Carla+H.+Krueger"},{"text":"Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["language","orthodoxy","orwell","politics","writing"],"id":126138,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"Every time I so much as blink you get an erection.","author":"Carla H. Krueger","tags":["adult-fiction","anti-utopia","bad-manager","carla-krueger","comedy","contemporary","dark","humor","humour","office-politics","office-worker","orwell","poison","psychological","quick-read","short-book","short-story","subversive","twisted"],"id":126366,"author_id":"Carla+H.+Krueger"},{"text":"Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: 'It doesn't really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.' He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.","author":"George Orwell","tags":["1984","orwell","reality"],"id":133085,"author_id":"George+Orwell"},{"text":"Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?","author":"George Orwell","tags":["capitalism","communism","equality","marxism","orwell","poverty","rich","socialism"],"id":135684,"author_id":"George+Orwell"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":35,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}