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
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that competitive sports often embody negative human traits rather than fairness and sportsmanship.
George Orwell's quote critiques the nature of competitive sports, arguing that they are intertwined with negative emotions such as hatred and jealousy, rather than embodying true fairness and camaraderie. He likens the competitive spirit of sports to a form of war, highlighting the aggressive and unethical aspects that often overshadow the intended spirit of competition.
Themes
SportsCompetitionHuman NatureViolencePhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
A coach might use this quote to discuss the darker aspects of competition with their team.
More from George Orwell
All quotes →The 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
Who would then deny that when I am sipping tea in my tearoom I am swallowing the whole universe with it and that this very moment of my lifting the bowl to my lips is eternity itself transcending time and space?
D.T. SuzukiRead
You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.
Carl JungRead
We are all as much extraordinary phenomena of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars and the form of a galaxy.
Alan WattsRead
Sometimes immense things, like war and death and aging, are best seen from the corner of the eye and written of only obliquely, with tremendous lightness.
Lauren GroffRead
Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them.
Romesh GunesekeraRead
Even if I seemed to remember, I could not know. For just to remember something is not to know if it really happened. That is a primary fact of the inner life, the most difficult fact with which we must live.
Joyce Carol OatesRead