A Quote by George Orwell

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.

George Orwell

Quote Topics

Accord Aware Because Become Comparison Even Indeed Long Masses Merely Never Oppressed Own Permitted Revolt Standards

Quote Author

George Orwell
British - Novelist
June 25, 1903 - January 21, 1950

If the ministers of the Church have often permitted nations to revolt for Heaven's cause, they never allowed them to revolt against real evils or known violencess. It is from Heaven that the chains have come to fetter the minds of mortals.

Baron d'Holbach

A tolerant person should not be harrased. The subject or the ruled ones generally is loyal to the ruler. The people tak to revolt when they are helpless. The duty of the ruler is that his humble people mey not tak to revolt being suppressed by his bad polity. Considering the forbearance of the subject, do not ill behave with them so that they may feel oppressed.

Chanakya

To revolt within society in order to make it a little better, to bring about certain reforms, is like the revolt of prisoners to improve their life within the prison walls; and such revolt is no revolt at all, it is just mutiny. Do you see the difference? Revolt within society is like the mutiny of prisoners who want better food, better treatment within the prison; but revolt born of understanding is an individual breaking away from society, and that is creative revolution.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Revolt, it will be said, implies violence; but this is an outmoded, an incompetent conception of revolt. The most effective form of revolt in this violent world we live in is non-violence.

Herbert Read

Those who call for censorship in the name of the oppressed ought to recognize it is never the oppressed who determine the bounds of censorship.

Aryeh Neier

National discord is, like religion, a standardized form of revolt; and the moment a revolt is standardized, it is no longer a revolt.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The memory of oppressed people is one thing that cannot be taken away, and for such people, with such memories, revolt is always an inch below the surface.

Howard Zinn

When we revolt it’s not for a particular culture. We revolt simply because, for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.

Frantz Fanon

My philosophy is such that I am not going to vote against the oppressed. I have been oppressed, and so I am always going to have avote for the oppressed, regardless of whether that oppressed is black or white or yellow or the people of the Middle East, or what. I have that feeling.

Septima Poinsette Clark

With the establishment of a relationship of oppression, violence has already begun. Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something objective whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior of violence to establish their subjugation.

Paulo Freire

My discord must be different from yours; my revolt must not be the same thing as yours. It will not be a revolt if it is moulding itself around your revolt.

Jiddu Krishnamurti

O Lord, may I never want to look good. O Jesus, may I always read it all: out loud and the very way it should be. May I never look at the other findings until I have come to my own true conclusions: May I care for the least of the young: and become aware of the one poem that each may have written; may I be aware of what each thing is, delighted with form, and wary of the false comparison; may I never use the word "brilliant."

Theodore Roethke

To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns against the foot that crushes it. In general, the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt.

Mikhail Bakunin

Most commonly revolt is born of material circumstances; but insurrection is always a moral phenomenon. Revolt is Masaniello, who led the Neapolitan insurgents in 1647; but insurrection is Spartacus. Insurrection is a thing of the spirit, revolt is a thing of the stomach.