
“Public opinion's always in advance of the law.”
Windows, Act I (1922)
"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)
“Public opinion's always in advance of the law.”
Windows, Act I (1922)
"Fooling the People as a Fine Art", La Follette's Magazine (April 1918)
“The law is in a sense the consolidated public opinion of society.”
Defence of Criminals: A Criticism of Morality (1889)
"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels," Polemic (September/October 1946) - Full text online http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/swift/english/e_swift
Context: In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.
“Neighbour vies with his neighbour as he hurries after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men.”
Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 23.
Source: 1910s, Why Men Fight https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Why_Men_Fight (1917), pp. 48-50
1920s, Law and Order (1920)
"The Office of the People in Art, Government and Religion" (1835), p. 421
Literary and Historical Miscellanies (1855)
"Freedom of the Park", Tribune (7 December 1945)