Suppose that an inhabitant of Venus or Mars were to contemplate us from the height of a mountain, and watch the little black speck...s that we form in space, as we come and go in the streets and squares of our towns. Would the mere sight of our movements, our buildings, machines, and canals, convey to him any precise idea of our morality, intellect, our manner of thinking and loving, and hoping--in a word, of our real and intimate self? All he could do, like ourselves when we gaze at the hive, would be to take note of some facts that seem very surprising; and from these facts to deduce conclusions probably no less erroneous, no less uncertain, than those we choose to form concerning the bee.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering--a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines a...nd terrifying weapons--a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting--three hundred million people all with the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes, in patched-up nineteenth-century houses that smelt always of cabbage and bad lavatories.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The learned professors have been at considerable pains in their attempts to make a distinction between tools and implements on the... one hand, and machinery on the other. Nor have they arrived much of anywhere. The one is continually shading into the other. Here is an ordinary shovel used by a day labourer in a ditch; here is the same shovel with a somewhat thicker handle, containing a pneumatic attachment which is said to improve its digging power; here is a very much larger shovel with curved ends and steel teeth, hitched to an arm that is hitched to a steam engine, which can gobble up a cartload of dirt at one mouthful. Where does the tool stop and the machine begin? A grindstone is widely held to be a primitive tool; a turret lathe is widely held to be a machine. Both spin around. What is the essential difference? The employment of nonhuman power, steam, oil, gas, has been defined as the difference. Well and good. Then everything worked by human hands and legs is a tool only, and bicycles, typewriters, adding machines, sewing machines, foot lathes, clocks, hand-pumps--are not machines. Which is absurd. And what is one to do with treadmills for grinding corn, whose motive power is said by some to be the donkey, and by some the carrot in front of his nose?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Theology starts with dogmas, philosophy begins with problems. Philosophy sees the problem first, theology has the answer in advanc...e. We must not, however, disregard another important difference. Not only are the problems of philosophy not identical with the problems of religion; their status is not the same. Philosophy is, in a sense, a kind of thinking that has a beginning but no end. In it, the awareness of the problem outlives all solutions. Its answers are questions in disguise; every new answer giving rise to new questions. In religion, on the other hand, the mystery of the answer hovers over all questions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous a...nd loathed because they impose slavery.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover,... serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What I am anxious to do is to get the best bill possible with the least amount of friction.... I wish to avoid [splitting our part...y]. I shall do all in my power to retain the corporation tax as it is now and also force a reduction of the [tariff] schedules. It is only when all other efforts fail that I'll resort to headlines and force the people into this fight.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »