“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not
as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In
our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the
indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also
corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and
hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political
language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder
respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War
against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think
they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered
by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is
strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have
now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first
duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the
right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of
universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.”
George Orwell (1903-1950), Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Edited by George Packer, 2008)
On my way to work, on one of the old stairways going down to the Loire (the one nearer the St Symphorien bridge), I came across this bab...
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