21 quotes
I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Everyone always did miss everyone else in this war, whenever it was humanly possible to do so.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
In stationary warfare there are three things that all soldiers long for: a battle, more cigarettes, and a week's leave.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Human beings were behaving as human beings and not as cogs in the capitalist machine.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed!
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
In reality it was the Communists above all others who prevented revolution in Spain.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
It was queer how the general spirit seemed to change when you got anywhere near the front line. All or nearly all of the vicious hatred of the political parties evaporated.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
[G]oodness knows how many times the Spanish standard of marksmanship has saved my life.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
I have no particular love for the idealised "worker" as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Elsewhere in Spain no formal unification between Socialists and Communists had taken place, but the Communist viewpoint and the Right-wing Socialist viewpoint could everywhere be regarded as identical.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
An immense amount, enough to fill many books, has already been written on the subject [of the Barcelona fighting], and I do not suppose I should exaggerate if I said that nine-tenths of it is untruthful.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
All Spaniards, we discovered, knew two English expressions. One was "O.K., baby", the other was a word used by the Barcelona whores in their dealings with English sailors, and I am afraid the compositors would not print it.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
The Communists had gained power and a vast increase of membership partly by appealing to the middle classes against the revolutionaries, but partly also because they were the only people who looked capable of winning the war.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
The only unexpected feature in the Spanish situation – and outside Spain it has caused an immense amount of misunderstanding – is that among the parties on the Government side the Communists stood not upon the extreme Left, but upon the extreme Right.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
[F]inally, a year after the outbreak of war and revolution, there remained a Government composed entirely of Right-wing Socialists, Liberals, and Communists.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies — unless one counts journalists.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)