Homage to Catalonia

by George Orwell

For any idealist who dreamed of forging a more democratic and equitable world, the late 1930s were a grim time.

Needless to say mañana never came.

when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

You could not, as before, ‘agree to differ’ and have drinks with a man who was supposedly your political opponent.

No one I met at this time—doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients—failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.