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Quotes from Looking Back on the Spanish War — George Orwell

1903–1950

← All quotes by George Orwell

7 quotes

Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

I believe that in the future we shall come to feel that Stalin's foreign policy, instead of being so diabolically clever as it is claimed to be, has been merely opportunistic and stupid.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

The intelligentsia are the people who squeal loudest against fascism, and yet a respectable proportion of them collapse into defeatism when the pinch comes. They are far-sighted enough to see the odds against them, and moreover they can be bribed — for it is evident that the Nazis think it worth while to bribe intellectuals.

Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: George Orwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.