George Orwell Quotes

Priesthoods were invented in order to provide the commoners and slaves with a theory of the world, so that they could accept society as it was. This theory explained that social inequalities were intrinsically good and necessary.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

Traditional autocrats leave in place existing allocations of wealth, power, status, and other re-sources which in most traditional societies favor an affluent few and maintain masses in poverty. But they worship traditional gods and observe traditional taboos. They do not disturb the habitual rhythms of work and leisure, habitual places of residence, habitual patterns of family and personal relations.

Behind the honeyed but patently absurd pleas for equality is a ruthless drive for placing themselves (the elites) at the top of a new hierarchy of power.

An earthly kingdom cannot exist without inequality of persons. Some must be free, some serfs, some rulers, some subjects.

The history of the world is the history of the privileged few.

Who controls the present controls the past. There's a power structure, if you like, between the present and the past and the future, and that's what I'm interested in.

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

Upper classes are a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

Class structures are a luxury that we cannot afford.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

Every man needs slaves like he needs clean air. To rule is to breathe, is it not? And even the most disenfranchised get to breathe. The lowest on the social scale have their spouses or their children.

I'm reluctant to use the word class so much.

Is the great working class oppressed? Yes, undoubtedly it is. God has intended the great to be great and the little to be little.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for suppressing another.

The great families have their privileges.

No country can exist without a ruling class. The governing class in a America is a rank that is for sale.

The ignorance of the working class and the superior intelligence of the privileged class are superstitions fostered by ... universities and churches, and by all the centers of privilege.

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

In all social systems there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life. That is, a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill. Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity. Such a class you must have, or you would not have that other class which leads progress, civilization, and refinement.

The blunting effects of slavery upon the slaveholder's moral perceptions are known and conceded the world over; and a privileged class, an aristocracy, is but a band of slaveholders under another name.

Inequality [is] a social control mechanism supported by financial interests’ belief in the desirability of oligarchy.

The struggle for power in our day lies not between Crown and people, or between a caste of nobles and a bourgeoisie, but between the classes who have property and the classes who have none.

I tell my students that the single most powerful thing that we have in this country - something that literally harbors no dissent and no questioning - is the all-powerful elite narrative.