Alienation

[1943-1944]  George Orwell,  Animal Farm, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1966

-  "Rations, reduced in December, were reduced again in February, and lanterns in the stalls were forbidden, to save oil. But the pigs seemed comfortable enough, and in fact were putting on weight if anything."
"But if there were hardships to be borne, they were partly offset by the fact that life nowadays had a greater dignity than it had had before. There were more songs, more speeches, more processions. Napoleon had commanded that once a week there should be held something called a Spontaneous Demonstration, the object of which was to celebrate the struggles and triumph of Animal Farm." (pp. 97-98)

[1948]  George Orwell,  Nineteen Eighty-Four, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1999

-  "The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant." (p. 89)

[1964]  Tristram Coffin,  The Armed Society. Militarism in modern America, Penguin Books, Baltimore, Maryland

- "A demonologist is important to warfare, at least for Americans, Russians, Chinese and Arabs. We must hate an enemy before we can fight him properly." (p. 122)

- "The Pentagon understands ... that it must keep the electorate in a state of semi-terror to get its large appropriations. The Navy spots Russian sub-marines off the coasts. The Air Force 'leaks' a story to a senator of a new Soviet missile build-up." (p. 197)

[1975]  André Glucksmann,  La cuisinière et le mangeur d'hommes. Essai sur l'État, le marxisme, les camps de concentration, Seuil, Paris, 1975

-  "Que fait Boukharine isolé, sentant sa disgrâce et anticipant peut-être son procès? Il rédige la Constitution qui sera promulguée à Moscou en 1936! Autour de lui les centrales de l'Archipel du Goulag fonctionnent, le massacre des paysans touche à sa fin, ses camarades de parti commencent à tomber, ses plus proches compagnons d'armes sont torturés puis jugés. Mais Boukharine ne dialogue qu'avec l'État, il lui prescrit des règles, il écrit 'la Constitution la plus démocratique du monde'. L'État purge massivement la société - qu'importe, le penseur purifie le langage de l'État!  Boukharine prête sa voix à l'État et lui donne sa tête à couper." (p. 84)

-  "Juste avant son arrestation, il rédige une lettre, ultime justification : 'Ma vie se termine. J'incline la tête sous la hache du bourreau... Je ressens toute mon impuissance devant cette machine infernale qui, sans doute à l'aide de méthodes moyenâgeuses, a acquis un pouvoir gigantesque, fabrique la calomnie à la chaîne, agit avec audace et certitude.'
Halte-là. L'unique message que Boukharine fait apprendre par coeur à sa femme pour la postérité, à qui l'adresse-t-il? 'A la future génération des dirigeants du Parti'!" (p. 85)

[1996]  Matt Ridley,  The Origins of Virtue, Softback Preview, England, 1997

-  "Human beings are terribly easily talked into following the most absurd and dangerous path for no better reason than that everybody else is doing it. In Nazi Germany, virtually everybody suspended their judgement to follow a psychopath. In Maoist China, merely by issuing a series of pronouncements a sadistic leader induced a vast number of people to do ridiculous things like denounce and attack all school teachers, melt down all cooking pots to make steel, or kill sparrows." (p. 181)

[1980]  Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman,  Free to Choose, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1983

-  "... the New York State Government conducts lotteries and provides facilities for off-track betting on races. It advertises extensively to induce its citizens to buy lottery tickets and bet on the races - at terms that yield a very large profit to the government." (p. 173)