(Roughly) Daily

…Just one of the extraordinary items one will find in “The Complete Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products.”

As we sharpen our strategies, we might raise a birthday banner to Eric Blair– better known by his pen name, George Orwell– who wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, among other cautionary (and visionary) tales, and who was born on this date in 1903.

All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others.
– Animal Farm

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? … Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now? … The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
– Nineteen Eighty-Four

Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.

– Essays