A Quote by George Orwell

There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.

George Orwell

Quote Topics

Except Itself Literary Literary Merit Majority Majority Opinion Merit Opinion Survival Test Which

Quote Author

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

It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress. In the process by which opinion is formed, it is very probable that, by the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached. It is because we do not yet know which of the many competing new opinions will prove itself the best that we wait until it has gained sufficient support.

Friedrich August von Hayek

A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.

Mary Parker Follett

No religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason, will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and character, not possession of wealth, title or birth, will be the test of merit.

Mahatma Gandhi

If people are reacting to films based on their degree of success or failure, then they're not really looking at the movie. I don't really care about that. Everyone's entitled to an opinion, but at least base your opinion on the merit of the work itself.

Matt Dillon

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Since I have difficulty defining merit and what merit alone means - and in any context, whether it's judicial or otherwise - I accept that different experiences in and of itself, bring merit to the system.

Sonia Sotomayor

And that which yesterday was the novel opinion of one man, to-day becomes the general opinion of the majority.

Leo Tolstoy

A fashionable milieu is one in which everybody's opinion is made up of the opinion of all the others. Has everybody a different opinion? Then it is a literary milieu.

Marcel Proust

It is possible to indulge too great contempt for mere success, which is frequently attended with all the practical advantages of merit itself, and with several advantages that merit alone can never command.

William Benton Clulow

In my opinion, this vicious circle will be broken by history itself. Because sticking to the current form of governance, which is to say guaranteeing the survival of [Vladimir] Putin's regime, will necessarily lead to the demise of Russia within its present borders.

Garry Kasparov

The law is the survival of the fittest.... The law is not the survival of the 'better' or the 'stronger,' if we give to those words any thing like their ordinary meanings. It is the survival of those which are constitutionally fittest to thrive under the conditions in which they are placed; and very often that which, humanly speaking, is inferiority, causes the survival.

Herbert Spencer

If merit is not recognised, still it is merit, and it ought to be honoured as such; but if it is rewarded, it becomes valuable in the eyes of all, and everybody is encouraged to pursue that course in which merit obtains its due reward.

Keshub Chandra Sen

The world more often rewards the appearances of merit than merit itself.

Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

Blaise Pascal

I don't like the idea of a book being a test or being used for a test. The way - in my opinion - to make good readers is to let kids choose their own books and not test them.