George Orwell on War and Self-Defense

„Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.“

George OrwellGeorge Orwell on portraying war as self-defense and the influence of propagandistic interpretations.
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George Orwell was a British writer, journalist, and social critic, known for his critical novels on totalitarianism and political power.

George Orwell critiques the political presentation of war as necessary self-defense and questions propagandistic interpretations.


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Literature on propaganda

George Orwell quote image about war and self-defense

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950), was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His works, including '1984' and 'Animal Farm', are major classics of political literature that expose totalitarian regimes and social injustices.

Quote by George Orwell about war, language manipulation, and truthCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell
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Noam Chomsky quote about the characteristics and objectives of preventive warCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The target of preventive war must have several characteristics. It must be virtually defenceless; it must be important enough to be worth the trouble; it must be possible to portray it as the ultimate evil and an imminent threat to our survival." Noam Chomsky
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Quote by Mark Twain about war, lies, and self-deceptionCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." Mark Twain
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Quote on war, reason, and mass hysteria by Stefan ZweigCopyright © yoice.net – Quote Artwork
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"The tales of gouged-out eyes and severed hands which appear on the third or fourth day of every war filled the newspapers. They did not know, those innocents who spread such lies, that the accusation of every possible cruelty against the enemy is as much war materiel as are munitions and planes, and that they are systematically taken out of storage at the beginning of every war. War does not permit itself to be coordinated with reason and righteousness. [...] Shakespeare was banned from the German stage, Mozart and Wagner from the French and English concert halls, German professors declared that Dante had been Germanic, the French that Beethoven had been a Belgian, intellectual culture was requisitioned without scruple from the enemy countries like grain and ore. [...] After a few weeks, determined to escape this dangerous mass psychosis, I moved to a rural suburb to commence my personal war in the midst of war, the struggle against the betrayal of Reason by the current mass passion." Stefan Zweig
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