Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.
Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn’t do the hangman’s job.
In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.
The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to do.
People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? ‘Natural’ death, almost by defintion, means something slow, smelly and painful.
But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.
A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.
I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting.
To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.
One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense over sensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting.
The party is not concerned with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, providing that the hierarchical structure always remains the same.
Weakness is strength.
A peace that is truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war.
Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.
The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.
And I believe that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph again.
I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you’re more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put if off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.
Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.
Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.