People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. – George Orwell
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. – George Orwell
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. – George Orwell
The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time. – George Orwell
Its rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether its Hemingway, Van Gogh… Robert Schumann has been mentioned… Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath… some of them with rather grim ends. – Stephen Fry