George Orwell idézet

oldal 15

„A vallomás nem árulás. Amit mondasz vagy teszel, nem számít; csak az érzések számítanak. Ha rá tudnának venni, hogy ne szeresselek téged, az lenne az igazi árulás.”

„De ha a gondolat elrontja a beszédet, akkor a beszéd megronthatja a gondolatot is.”

„Mi nem csupán elpusztítjuk ellenségeinket; mi megváltoztatjuk őket.”

„Az emberiség számára a választás a szabadság és a boldogság között rejlik, és az emberiség nagy része számára a boldogság jobb.”

„A duplagondolkodás azt a képességet jelenti, hogy valaki egyidejűleg két, egymásnak ellentmondó nézet birtokában van, s mindkettőt elfogadja.”

„Az emberek elpusztításának leghatékonyabb módja az, ha tagadják és megsemmisítik a történelmük megértését”

„A valóság az emberi elmében létezik, és sehol máshol.”

„A hatalom abban rejlik, hogy az emberi elmét darabokra tépjük, s aztán olyan új alakba rakjuk össze, amilyenbe akarjuk.”

„Az emberek általában véve jók akarnak lenni, de nem túl jók, és nem mindig elég jók.”

„Amennyire én látom, az elmúlt évek politikai gondolkodása ugyanilyen módon romlott meg. Az emberek csak akkor látják előre a jövőt, ha az egybeesik a saját kívánságaikkal, és a legnyilvánvalóbb tényeket is figyelmen kívül hagyják, ha azok nemkívánatosak.”

„A náci elmélet […] kifejezetten tagadja, hogy létezne olyan, hogy »igazság«. […] Ennek a fajta gondolkodásnak egy olyan rémisztő világ megteremtése a célja, melyben a Vezér, vagy egy uralkodó klikk nemcsak a jövőt de a múltat is az ellenőrzése alatt tartja. Ha a vezér azt állítja, hogy ez és ez az esemény »soha nem történt meg« – nos, akkor soha nem történt meg. Ha azt mondja kettő meg kettő az öt – akkor kettő meg kettő az öt. Egy ilyen jövő lehetősége rémisztőbb számomra a bombáknál is.”

„Minél inkább eltávolodik egy társadalom az igazságtól, annál inkább utálni fogja azokat, akik kimondják azt.”

„A náci elmélet kifejezetten tagadja, hogy létezne olyan, hogy igazság. Ennek a fajta gondolkodásnak egy olyan rémisztő világ megteremtése a célja, melyben a Vezér, vagy egy uralkodó klikk nemcsak a jövőt de a múltat is az ellenőrzése alatt tartja. Ha a vezér azt állítja, hogy ez és ez az esemény soha nem történt meg.”

„A náci elmélet kifejezetten tagadja, hogy létezne olyan, hogy igazság. Ennek a fajta gondolkodásnak egy olyan rémisztő világ megteremtése a célja, melyben a Vezér, vagy egy uralkodó klikk nemcsak a jövőt de a múltat is az ellenőrzése alatt tartja. Ha a vezér azt állítja, hogy ez és ez az esemény soha nem történt meg.”

„Mi tudjuk, hogy soha senki sem ragadja magához a hatalmat azzal a szándékkal, hogy lemondjon róla. A hatalom nem eszköz; a hatalom cél. Nem azért csinál az ember diktatúrát, hogy megoltalmazzon egy forradalmat, hanem azért csinál forradalmat, hogy diktatúrát csinálhasson. Az üldözés célja az üldözés. A kínzás célja a kínzás. A hatalom célja a hatalom.”

„Semmi sem a sajátod azon a néhány köbcentin kívül, ami a koponyádban van.”

„Négy láb jó, két láb rossz.”

„Félnek a szerelemtől, mert az olyan világot teremt, amelyet nem tudnak irányítani.”

„Ha listát kellene készítenem arról a hat könyvről, amelyek megmaradnak, amikor az összes többi elpusztul, a Gulliver utazásait biztosan közéjük sorolnám.”

„Minden nemzedék okosabbnak hiszi magát az előzőnél, és bölcsebbnek az őt követőnél.”

„Minden állat egyenlő, de egyes állatok egyenlőbbek a többinél.”

„Az újságírás lényege azt megírni, amit nem akar valaki nyomtatásban látni. Minden más csupán propaganda.”

„Amíg tudatossá nem válnak, soha nem fognak lázadni, és addig, amíg nem lázadnak, nem válhatnak tudatossá.”

„Ha szeret valaki, viszontszereted, s ha semmi egyebet nem tudsz neki adni, szeretetet még mindig adhatsz.”

„Aki a múltat irányítja, az irányítja a jövőt is, aki a jelent irányítja, annak kezében van a múlt.”

„Ha titkot akar tartani, akkor azt saját maga elől is el kell rejtenie.”

„A fájdalom színe előtt nincsenek hősök.”

„A politikusok beszédét úgy tervezték, hogy a hazugságok valósághűek és a gyilkosságok tiszteletreméltóak legyenek, és szilárdnak tűnjenek.”

„A boldogság csak az elfogadásban létezhet.”

„Azok a mítoszok, amelyekben hisznek, általában valóra válnak.”

„Gyönyörű dolog a szavak pusztítása.”

„A Nagy Testvér figyel téged.”

„A legjobb könyvek azok, amelyek azt mondják el, amit már tudsz.”

„Éjszaka csak azért alszunk nyugodtan az ágyunkban, mert a durva emberek készen állnak arra, hogy a nevünkben erőszakot kövessenek el.”

„Ragyogó, hideg áprilisi nap volt, és az órák tizenhármat ütöttek.”

„Találkozzunk ott, ahol nincs sötétség.”

„Ahol van egy erőltetett ortodoxia - vagy akár két ortodoxia, ami gyakran előfordul -, ott a jó írás megszűnik.”

„Élvezem a veled való beszélgetést. Az elméd vonz engem. Hasonlít a saját elmémre, kivéve, hogy te éppenséggel őrült vagy.”

„Az ember az egyetlen igazi ellenségünk. Távolítsuk el az embert a színről, és az éhezés és a túlhajszoltság gyökeres oka örökre megszűnik.”

„A magam kis módján évek óta küzdök a történelem szisztematikus meghamisítása ellen, amely jelenleg is zajlik.”

„Talán az ember tényleg meghal, amikor az agya leáll, amikor elveszti az erejét, hogy befogadjon egy új gondolatot.”

„De ahhoz, hogy a térképolvasás népszerűvé váljon, háborúra van szükség.”

„Még a hülyeség is jobb, mint a totalitarizmus.”

“We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.”

“The thing that I think very striking is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval. The dominant note is always horror. Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood. I watched a man hanged once. There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action. I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution. It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere. They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record; whereas battle literature is largely written by people who have never heard a gun go off and think of a battle as a sort of football match in which nobody gets hurt.”

“There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa. Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.”

“[Some correspondents] rightly claimed that State patronage [for artists and authors] is a better guarantee against starvation than private patronage, but seemed to me too ready to disregard the censorship that this implies. The usual line was that it is better for the artist to be a responsible member of a community than an anarchic individualist. The issue, however, is not between irresponsible "self-expression" and discipline; it is between truth and lies. Artists don't so much object to aesthetic discipline. Architects will design theatres or churches equally readily, writers will switch from the three-volume novel to the one-volume, or from the play to the film, according to the demand. But the point is that this is a political age. A writer inevitably writes—and less directly this applies to all the arts—about contemporary events, and his impulse is to tell what he believes to be the truth. But no government, no big organization, will pay for the truth. To take a crude example: can you imagine the British Government commissioning E. M. Forster to write A Passage to India?”

“[T]here is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years.”

“In addition to this there is the horrible — the really disquieting — prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”

“It was queer. All over England young men were eating their hearts out for lack of jobs, and here was he, Gordon, to whom the very word 'job' was faintly nauseous, having jobs thrust unwanted upon him. It was an example of the fact that you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don't want it.”

“Since the decay of the belief in personal immortality, death has never seemed funny, and it will be a long time before it does so again. Hence the disappearance of the facetious epitaph, once a common feature of country churchyards. I should be astonished to see a comic epitaph dated later than 1850. There is one in Kew, if I remember rightly, which might be about that date. About half the tombstone is covered with a long panegyric on his dead wife by a bereaved husband: at the bottom of the stone is a later inscription which reads, ‘Now he’s gone, too’.”

“It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith-as mysterious as faith itself. Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in logic; it is a change in the climate of the mind.”

“When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial, atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved, as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.”

“One cannot really be Catholic & grown-up.”

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground. He liked to think of the lost people, the under-ground people: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes. It is a good world that they inhabit, down there in their frowzy kips and spikes. He liked to think that beneath the world of money there is that great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal. That was where he wished to be, down in the ghost-kingdom, below ambition. It comforted him somehow to think of the smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness where you could lose yourself forever.”

“The outstanding, unmistakable mark of Dickens's writing is the unnecessary detail.”

“[Man] is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.”

“Not to have a national anthem would be logical.”

“We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”

“[E]ven stupidity is better than totalitarianism.”

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

“I have already indicated that I believe antisemitism to be essentially a neurosis, but of course it has its rationalisations, which are sincerely believed in and are partly true. The rationalisation put forward by the common man is that the Jew is an exploiter.”

“The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreover they can be bribed — for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals.”

“The thing that I think very striking is that no one, or no one I can remember, ever writes of an execution with approval.”

“It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extend, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people live under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint, the British ruling class had their points.”

“England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control — that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”

“England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. But in any calculation about it one has got to take into account its emotional unity, the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act together in moments of supreme crisis. It is the only great country in Europe that is not obliged to drive hundreds of thousands of its nationals into exile or the concentration camps.”

“The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle-class world, and everything outside, these limits is either laughable or slightly wicked.”

“Before, he had fought against the money code, and yet he had clung to his wretched remnant of decency. But now it was precisely from decency that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go down, deep down, into some world where decency no longer mattered; to cut the strings of his self-respect, to submerge himself—to sink, as Rosemary had said. It was all bound up in his mind with the thought of being under ground.”

“Their friendship was at an end, it seemed to him. The evil time when he had lived on Ravelston had spoiled everything. Charity kills friendship.”

“She looked at him helplessly. After all, it was no use. There was this money-business standing in the way - these meaningless scruples which she had never understood but which she had accepted merely because they were his. She felt all the impotence, the resentment of a woman who sees an abstract idea triumphing over common sense.”

“He would only drift and sink, drift and sink, like the others of his family; but worse than them - down, down into some dreadful sub-world that as yet he could only dimly imagine. It was what he had chosen when he declared war on money. Serve the money-god or go under; there is no other rule.”