“But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.”

—  George Orwell , book 1984

Source: 1984

Last update Sept. 30, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong." by George Orwell?
George Orwell photo
George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950

Related quotes

“I was wrong, however, to suppose that Sellers thought the world revolved around him. He thought the cosmos did too, and history, and the fates… Like every egomaniac, he behaved as if everybody else spent their day being as interested in him as he was.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Peter Sellers, p. 127-9
Memoirs, North Face of Soho (2006)

George Eliot photo

“Sane people did what their neighbors did, so that if any lunatics were at large, one might know and avoid them.”

George Eliot book Middlemarch

Source: Middlemarch (1871), Chapter 1 (misprinted as "Some people did" in some editions, such as Penguin Signet Classics).

Terry Pratchett photo

“He felt that the darkness was full of unimaginable horrors - and the trouble with unimaginable horrors was that they were only too easy to imagine…”

Terry Pratchett book The Light Fantastic

Source: The Light Fantastic

Leo Tolstoy photo

“Simonson, in rubber jacket and similar galoshes, bound with whip-cord over woolen socks (he was a vegetarian and did not use the skin of animals), was also awaiting the departure of the party. He stood near the entrance of the house, writing down in a note-book a thought that occurred to him. “If,” he wrote, “a bacterium were to observe and analyze the nail of a man, it would declare him an inorganic being. Similarly, from an observation of the earth’s surface, we declare it to be inorganic. That is wrong.””

Leo Tolstoy book Resurrection

Source: Resurrection (1899), Ch. 83

Jane Addams photo

“If the underdog were always right, one might quite easily try to defend him. The trouble is that very often he is but obscurely right, sometimes only partially right, and often quite wrong; but perhaps he is never so altogether wrong and pig-headed and utterly reprehensible as he is represented to be by those who add the possession of prejudices to the other almost insuperable difficulties of understanding him.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

Source: Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), Ch. 17

Muhammad photo

“He also reported that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, "Help your brother, wronging or wronged." A man said, "Messenger of Allah, I can help him if he is wronged but tell me how I can help him if he is wronging?" He said, "You can restrain him - or prevent him - from injustice. That is helping him."”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Riyadh-as-Saliheen by Imam Al-Nawawi, volume 2, hadith number 237
Sunni Hadith

Harry V. Jaffa photo

“Lincoln thought slavery was wrong and he did not think a vote of the people could make it right.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, Interview with Peter Robinson (2009)

Clive Staples Lewis photo

“Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul—nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that.”

Clive Staples Lewis book That Hideous Strength

Source: That Hideous Strength (1945), Ch. 16 : Banquet at Belbury, section 6

Jerome K. Jerome photo

“It is not the actual discomforts themselves that are hard to bear. Who would mind roughing it a bit if that were all it meant? What cared Robinson Crusoe for a patch on his trousers? Did he wear trousers? I forget; or did he go about as he does in the pantomimes? What did it matter to him if his toes did stick out of his boots? and what if his umbrella was a cotton one, so long as it kept the rain off? His shabbiness did not trouble him; there was none of his friends round about to sneer him. Being poor is a mere trifle. It is being known to be poor that is the sting.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Marjorie Taylor Greene photo

“Marjorie is wrong, and her intentional decision to compare the horrors of the Holocaust with wearing masks is appalling. The Holocaust is the greatest atrocity committed in history. The fact that this needs to be stated today is deeply troubling.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene (1974) American politician and businesswoman from the state of Georgia

Statement from House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy https://republicanleader.house.gov/leader-mccarthy-condemns-comparisons-to-the-holocaust/, 25 May 2021
About

Related topics