Category: Thought

Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.

George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic (January 1946).

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

Hannah Arendt, The New Yorker (September 12, 1970).

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

George Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” Polemic (January 1946).

Sure, politics ain’t bean-​bag. ’Tis a man’s game, an’ women, childer, cripples an’ prohybitionists ’d do well to keep out iv it.

Finley Peter Dunne writing as “Mr. Dooley,” Chicago Evening Post, October 5, 1895.

Time was when people used to brag about how old they were — and I am old enough to remember it.

Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts,” from his Creators Syndicate column.

Nature never makes blunders; when she makes a fool she means it.

Affurisms. From Josh Billings: His Sayings (1865).