"Blair's personal life and Orwell's public activity both reflected one powerfully single-minded personality. Blair-Orwell was made of one piece: a recurrent theme in the testimonies of all those who knew him at close range was his "terrible simplicity." He had the "innocence of a savage." ... Orwell once defined himself half in jest — but only half — as a "Tory Anarchist." Indeed, after his first youthful experience in the colonial police in Burma, he only knew that he hated imperialism and all forms of political oppression; all authority appeared suspect to him, even "mere success seemed to me a form of bullying." Then after his inquiry into workers' conditions in northern industrial England during the Depression he developed a broad nonpartisan commitment to “socialism”: “socialism does mean justice and liberty when the nonsense is stripped off it.” The decisive turning point in his political evolution took place in Spain, where he volunteered to fight fascism. First he was nearly killed by a fascist bullet and then narrowly escaped being murdered by the Stalinist secret police:"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Related Quotes
"The Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the applicat…"
"Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laug…"
"By 'patriotism' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best…"
"In England, a century of strong government has developed what O. Henry called the stern and rugged fear of the police…"
"Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernouris…"
"And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the pa…"
"This means no more than vae victis - woe to the creed that is not backed by machine-guns!"
"To the well-fed it seems cowardly to complain of tight boots, because the well-fed live in a different world-a world …"
"What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from …"
"[T]here is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years."