“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The
Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in
the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What
pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from
the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the
others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.
The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in
their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own
motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had
seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around
the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and
equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with
the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a
revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the
dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of
torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to
understand me.”
George Orwell, 1984
George Orwell, 1984
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