George Orwell: Citáty anglicky (strana 9)

George Orwell byl anglický spisovatel a novinář. Citáty anglicky.
George Orwell: 606   citátů 1680   lajků

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

George Orwell kniha Shooting an Elephant

Zdroj: Shooting an Elephant

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

Possibly a paraphrase of Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development (1959): "This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them." It is similar in meaning to Orwell's line from Notes on Nationalism (1945): "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." However, Russell was commenting not on politics, as Orwell was, but on some philosophers and their ideas about language.
Misattributed
Varianta: Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.

“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”

"In Front of Your Nose," Tribune (22 March 1946)

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.”

"In Front of Your Nose" http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose, Tribune (22 March 1946)
Kontext: The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.