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Quotes of the Day for 25 June - George Orwell

Eric Arthur Blair was born at Motihari, India on this day in 1903, the sone of an opium agent for the British Raj. He was educated in England (Eton) but skipped university and served as a police officer in Burma. After he was called on to kill an elephant he quit to become, in his own words, "Eric the famous author." He was certainly prolific, he turned out two million words of fiction, reportage, essays, poems, and reviews. Participation in the Spanish Civil War set his opinions of communism and totalitarianism which show clearly in his last two books: Animal Farm and 1984. To avoid embarrassing his parents, he early had adopted the pen name George Orwell.

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent that the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules, and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
     - All from George Orwell, 1903 - 1950

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