“Get up in one of our industrial centres today and say that two and two make four, and if there is any financial interest concerned in maintaining that two and two make five, the police will bash your head in.”
Free Speech and Plain Language (1936)
Context: Get up in one of our industrial centres today and say that two and two make four, and if there is any financial interest concerned in maintaining that two and two make five, the police will bash your head in. Then what choice have you, save to degenerate either into a fool or into a hypocrite? And who wants to live in a land of fools and hypocrites?
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Albert Jay Nock68
American journalist 1870–1945Related quotes
James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) American-born, British-based artist
Whistler v. Ruskin
posthumous published
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”
George Orwell book 1984
Variant: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Source: 1984
“Even God cannot make two times two not make four.”
Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) philosopher
As quoted in Delbert D. Thiessen (ed.), A Sociobiology Compendium: Aphorisms, Sayings, Asides, p. 18
Marty Feldman (1934–1982) British actor and comedian
Interview in Speaking Frankly by Wendy Leigh (London: Muller, 1978).
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) American art collector and experimental writer of novels, poetry and plays
Four Saints in Three Acts (1927)
Operas and Plays (1932)
“Five years ago I was a four-stone apology — today I am two separate gorillas.”
Vivian Stanshall (1943–1995) English musician, artist and author
Mr. Apollo
Others
Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People
Variant: You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 52 (in 1998 edition)