“ Our civilisation is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. ”
George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936). copy citation
| Author | George Orwell |
|---|---|
| Source | Keep the Aspidistra Flying |
| Topic | greed fear |
| Date | 1936 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | |
| Weblink | http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200021.txt |
Context
“And if they did, what would they care? They were too busy being born, being married, begetting, working, dying. It mightn’t be a bad thing, if you could manage it, to feel yourself one of them, one of the ruck of men. Our civilisation is founded on greed and fear, but in the lives of common men the greed and fear are mysteriously transmuted into something nobler. The lower-middle-class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras—they lived by the money-code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency.”
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