Homage To Catalonia / Down And Out In Paris And London Quotes

“I have no particular love for the idealized “worker” as he appears in the bourgeois Communist’s mind, but 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.”
― George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia / Down And Out In Paris And London

“There is a
sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism.
Many of the normal motives of civilized life–snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of
the boss, etc.–had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had
disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money-tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned
anyone else as his master. Of course such a state of affairs could not last. It was simply a temporary and local phase in an enormous game that is being played over the
whole surface of the earth. But it lasted long enough to have its effect upon anyone
who experienced it. However much one cursed at the time, one realized afterwards
that one had been in contact with something strange and valuable. One had been
in a community where hope was more normal than apathy or cynicism, where the
word ’comrade’ stood for comradeship and not, as in most countries, for humbug.
One had breathed the air of equality. I am well aware that it is now the fashion to
deny that Socialism has anything to do with equality. In every country in the world a
huge tribe of party-hacks and sleek little professors are busy ’proving’ that Socialism
means no more than a planned state-capitalism with the grab-motive left intact. But fortunately there also exists a vision of Socialism quite different from this. The thing
that attracts ordinary men to Socialism and makes them willing to risk their skins for
it, the ’mystique’ of Socialism, is the idea of equality; to the vast majority of people
Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.”
― George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia / Down And Out In Paris And London

“Un governo che manda al fronte dei quindicenni, con fucili vecchi di quarant'anni, e tiene in retrovia gli uomini piú robusti e le armi piú nuove, ha evidentemente piú paura della rivoluzione che dei fascisti.”
― George Orwell, Homage To Catalonia / Down And Out In Paris And London