The Road to Wigan Pier

by George Orwell

they realise that losing your job does not mean that you cease to be a human being.

What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.

And the peculiar evil is this, that the less money you have, the less inclined you feel to spend it on wholesome food.

If the English physique has declined, this is no doubt partly due to the fact that the Great War carefully selected the million best men in England and slaughtered them, largely before they had had time to breed.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine gun.

Moreover, the war had been conducted mainly by old men and had been conducted with supreme incompetence.

I felt that I had got to escape not merely from imperialism but from every form of man’s dominion over man.

The tendency of mechanical progress is to make your environment safe and soft; and yet you are striving to keep yourself brave and hard.