Tuesday, December 28, 2010

George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. "Anything," he thinks, "any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose." He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom...

1 comment:

Thomas Daulton said...

Sharp stuff. I'm not as up on my Orwell as I ought to be. Kind-of riffing on the even older quote (forget who) that "the rich man and the poor man are equally free to sleep under the bridge"