If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible.
George OrwellRead
All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that leaders throughout history have often distorted reality to manipulate their followers.
George Orwell highlights the enduring tendency of rulers to shape and control the perceptions of those they govern. By imposing a 'false view of the world,' these leaders seek to maintain their power and authority, often obscuring the truth in order to influence public opinion and suppress dissent. This reflects a broader commentary on the manipulation of information and the importance of critical thought in the face of political propaganda.
Themes
RulersTruthManipulationPropagandaPower
In practice
Example use cases
In a debate about government transparency, one might reference this quote to illustrate the need for skepticism toward authority.
More from George Orwell
All quotes βThe creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
George OrwellRead
Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
George OrwellRead
Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
George OrwellRead
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George OrwellRead
It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
George OrwellRead
Similar quotes
In just the same way the thousands of successive positions of a runner are contracted into one sole symbolic attitude, which our eye perceives, which art reproduces, and which becomes for everyone the image of a man who runs.
Henri BergsonRead
Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but...at supper time, or walking along a road...He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.
Frederick BuechnerRead
There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
Edgar Allan PoeRead
I see the origin of the irresistible attraction of metaphor and analogy, the explanation of our strange and permanent need to find similarities in things. I can scarcely refrain from suspecting some ancient, diffused magnetism; a call from the center of things; a dim, almost lost memory, or perhaps a presentiment, pointless in so puny a being, of a universal syntax.
Roger CailloisRead
Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.
Werner HeisenbergRead
He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead