"Every war, when it comes, or before..." - Quote by George Orwell
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.
More by George Orwell
“If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen.”
“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.”
“We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.”
More on Propaganda
“You know well that government always kept a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, invented and put into the papers whatever might serve the [government] ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.”
“From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:WAR IS PEACEFREEDOM IS SLAVERYIGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.”
“Fine art is the subtlest, the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving to crowds of unobservant unreflecting people to whom real life means nothing.”
More on Deception
“Twas never merry world Since lowly feigning was called compliment.”
“Human life is thus only an endless illusion. Men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does when we are gone. Society is based on mutual hypocrisy.”
“If they [Plato and Aristotle] wrote about politics it was as if to lay down rules for a madhouse. And if they pretended to treat it as something really important it was because they knew that the madmen they were talking to believed themselves to be kings and emperors. They humored these beliefs in order to calm down their madness with as little harm as possible.”