-One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

-We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

-The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

-Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

George Orwell

What has always fascinated me about Orwell, is that his seminal works; Animal Farm, about the corruption of the Russian Revolution into the Leninist/Stalinist system of the Soviet Union, and 1984, describing a Totalitarian government (many points of which have come to pass); have come to be touchstones of the political Right, but he was an avowed Socialist and Leftist.

From Wikipedia:

It was the Spanish Civil War that played the most important part in defining his socialism. Having witnessed the success of the anarcho-syndicalist communities, and the subsequent brutal suppression of the anarcho-syndicalists and other revolutionaries by the Soviet-backed Communists, Orwell returned from Catalonia a staunch anti-Stalinist and joined the Independent Labour Party.

Tags: Orwell, quotes