The small god in Ch. 44 : the visitor
The Visitor (2002)
“An immense amount, enough to fill many books, has already been written on the subject [of the Barcelona fighting], and I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is untruthful.”
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes

“Too many songs have been written about love already, you know? Subject's covered.”
About why The Clash focuses on political songs.
Interview on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder on 5 June 1981.

"A note to the reader" - This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)

Section 2, paragraph 25.
The Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848)

The Evolution of A Revolt (1920)
Context: Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals. It can only be ensured by instinct, sharpened by thought practicing the stroke so often that at the crisis it is as natural as a reflex.

Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Blüthenstaub (1798)

J.D. Bernal (1937) "Dialectical Materialism and Modern Science" in: Science and Society, Volume II, No. 1, Winter 1937; Online ( here http://www.marxists.org/archive/bernal/works/1930s/dsams.htm) on Marxists Internet Archive (2002).
Response to a would be biographer in 1980, as quoted in "When Stephen met Sylvia" in The Guardian (24 April 2004) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1201328,00.html
Context: I am very honoured by your wanting to write a life of me. But the fact is I regard my life as rather a failure in the only thing in which I wanted it to succeed. I have not written the books I ought to have written and I have written a lot of books I should not have written. My life as lived by me has been interesting to me but to write truthfully about it would probably cause much pain to people close to me — and I always feel that the feelings of the living are more important than the monuments of the dead.

June 10, 1944
1940s–present, The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989)