Left/Right

[1937]  José Ortega Y Gasset,  La Rebelión de las Masas, Espasa-Calpe, Madrid, 1969

- "Ser de la izquierda es, como ser de la derecha, una de las infinitas maneras que el hombre puede elegir para ser un imbécil: ambas, en efecto, son formas de la hemiplejia moral." ("To be of the Left or to be of the Right is to choose one of the many ways available to people for being an idiot; both are, actually, forms of moral paralysis").

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

- "An uproar of voices was coming from the farmhouse. They [the animals] rushed back and looked through the window again. Yes, a violent quarrel was in progress. There were shoutings, bangings on the table, sharp suspicious glances, furious denials. The source of the trouble appeared to be that Napoleon and Mr. Pilkington had each played ann ace of spades simultaneously.
Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." (p. 120)

[1960] Elie Kedourie, Nationalism, Blackwell, Oxford, 1998, fourth expanded edition

- "It is ... a misunderstanding to ask whether nationalism is politics of the right or of the left. It is neither. Left and right are concepts which arose in the course of struggle between aristocracy, middle class and working class in European countries in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and are unintelligible apart from this particular history. In the nineteenth century, it was usual to consider nationalism a progressive, democratic, leftist movement." "To support nationalist movements in Europe and elsewhere was considered the duty of every true Liberal and humanitarian. This conjunction is ... a fortuitous accident, but the habits of mind it established have lasted into the twentieth century, when Liberals and Socialists think that their principles require them to support nationalist movements, particularly in Asia and Africa. But it is also significant that nationalists who, at one stage, were considered men of the left were, at a later stage, firmly denounced as men of the right: Pilsudski, Mussolini, Chiang Kai-shek, all began their careers as men of the left, and all, in time, were removed to the right." (p. 84)

[1968]  Quelle université? Quelle societé? Textes réunis par le centre de regroupement des information universitaires, Seuil, Paris, 1968

-  "Nous ne voulons plus avoir à choisir entre la gauche et la droite, l'est et l'ouest, l'orient et l'occident. Nous pensons qu'il y a d'autres choix, d'autres options au-delà des vieilles structures politiques actuelles héritées de la seconde guerre mondiale.
Si l'on a pu lire sur les murs de la Sorbonne : 'L'imagination prend le pouvoir', c'est bien parce que nous entendons prouver qu'il existe d'autres formes, d'autres structures et que nous n'acceptons plus une Europe partagée en deux à l'image de Berlin." (pp. 13-14)

[1990]  Alvin Toffler,  Powershift. Knowledge, wealth, and violence at the edge of the 21st century, Bantam books, London, 1991

-  "During the period of mass democracy, people, parties, and policies were typically categorized as either left-wing or right-wing. Issues were usually 'domestic' or 'foreign'. They fit into a neat framework.
The new system of wealth creation makes these political tags, and the coalitions that went with them, obsolete. Ecological catastrophes are neither right-wing nor left-wing, and some are both domestic and international." (p. 248)