Sublime

over one-sixth of the globe, there has reigned a State as oppressive as any other which is neither a capitalist nor a workers’ State. Certainly, Marx never foresaw anything of this kind.

For so far as there was a vague principle in these things, that principle has been wholly changed. It used to be said that a man could have liberty, so long as it did not interfere with the liberty of others.

If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.’

It’s the surprise part that Orwell couldn’t predict. He was looking in the wrong direction. Total surveillance. The privatisation of the private.

a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Quand la société impose à l’homme des sacrifices supérieurs aux services qu’elle lui rend, on a le droit de dire qu’elle cesse d’être humaine, qu’elle n’est plus faite pour l’homme, mais contre l’homme. Dans ces conditions, s’il arrive qu’elle se maintienne, ce ne peut être qu’aux dépens des citoyens ou de leur liberté ! Imbéciles, ne voyez-vous pa

Surtout, elle peut verser dans le despotisme si la majorité écrase la minorité et si l’égalité étouffe la liberté. Tocqueville trouve ainsi l’origine de l’instabilité politique de la France dans la destruction de la société aristocratique qui n’est pas parvenue à engendrer une société démocratique.

"It was then that untruth came down on our land of Russia. The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were being c

It’s a similar story with the flap copy that Orwell wrote for the first edition of Animal Farm, published in 1945 by Secker & Warburg.40 In clear, measured tones, it tells us: It is the history of a revolution that went wrong – and of the excellent excuses that were forthcoming at every step for each perversion of the original doctrine.