George Orwell Quotes

Ideology isn’t driving the dynamic in Washington, it’s the desire to stay in power.

Politics and power is a realm of relative influence.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

I was never a left-winger, actually. I was a pretend left-winger because it was more interesting than being a right-winger.

You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.

Politics means striving to share power or striving to influence the distribution of power, either among states or among groups within a state.

There are only two kinds of politics. They are not radical or reactionary, or conservative and liberal, or even Democratic and Republican. There are only the politics of fear and the politics of trust.

Every intellectual attitude is latently political.

I do not believe that politics in the long run is about individuals. It is about ideas.

The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.

There is no gambling like politics.

We're taught Lord Acton's axiom: all power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I believed that when I started these books, but I don't believe it's always true any more. Power doesn't always corrupt. Power can cleanse. What I believe is always true about power is that power always reveals.

There's something about Barack Obama that induces Americans to imagine what they cannot see. The Right envisions a vile socialist, while many on the Left picture an inspired liberal, politically restrained in his first term but now free to pursue his true beliefs.

Real politics are the possession and distribution of power.

Sometimes I think the world is divided into those who have a comfortable relationship with power and those who have a naturally adversarial relationship with power.

We live in a world in which politics has replaced philosophy.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

No, I do not identify with the right wing.

A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.

My parents are awesome, but they're pretty left-wing.

Everything is politics.

There are two things that interest me - and they're both power, ultimately. One is not having it and one is abusing it.

The essence of American politics consists of the manipulation of populism by elitism.

Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them.... In every country these two parties exist.... Call them, therefore, liberals and serviles, Jacobins and Ultras, Whigs and Tories, republicans and federalists, aristocrats and democrats, or by whatever name you please, they are the same party still and pursue the same object.

Politics is the art of dominating men.