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The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action the ability to pass directly from thought to action. Eric Hoffer		Sunday Dec 28, 2025
		Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969

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Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. Eric Arthur Blair

Quote Author: Eric Arthur Blair

Eric Arthur Blair

Eric Arthur Blair

Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 —21 January 1950), better known by the pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. Noted as a novelist and critic as well as a political and cultural commentator, Orwell is among the most widely admired English-language essayists of the 20th century. He is best known for two novels critical of totalitarianism in general, and Stalinism in particular: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four . Both were written and published towards the end of his life.

Other Eric Arthur Blair Quotes

The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Newspeak was the official language of Oceania.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Big Brother is watching you.

Whoever controls the past, controls the future.

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals.

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.... Power is not a means; it is an end ... not power over things, but over men.... In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.... There will be no loyalty, except loyalty toward the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.... Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.

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

But the thing that I saw in your face No power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst Shatters the crystal spirit.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

The best books ... are those that tell you what you know already.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

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.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language ... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.

An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in thenight to visit violence on those who would do us harm.