Politics and Power

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.

People can be induced to swallow anything, provided it is sufficiently seasoned with praise.

Power takes as ingratitude the writhing of its victims.

Power is pleasure; and pleasure sweetens pain.

The real cause, the effective one, that makes men lose power is that they have become unworthy to exercise it.

The jaws of power are always opened to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.

Those who have been once intoxicated with power . . . can never willingly abandon it.

Politics is a game of compromise . . . faith isn’t.

Politics, n . A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.

The garb of religion is the best cloak for power.

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.

Mutiny Acts are needed only by officers who command without authority. Divine right needs no whip.

The thieves had their revenge when Marx convicted the bourgeoisie of theft.

The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a carriage and pair.

In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody worships him and nobody does his will.

If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him.

Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters, are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.

In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.

Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel, but not in the kitchen.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

A man enjoys what he uses, not what his servants use.

Masters and servants are both tyrannical; but the masters are the more dependent of the two.

The relation of master and servant is advantageous only to masters who do not scruple to abuse their authority, and to servants who do not scruple to abuse their trust.