Why Orwell matters

In the past … the idea of rebellion and the idea of intellectual integrity were mixed up. A heretic – political, moral, religious or aesthetic – was one who refused to outrage his own conscience... [Nowadays] the dangerous proposition [is that] freedom is undesirable and intellectual honesty is a form of anti-social selfishness ... [But] to write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. The enemy of clear language is insincerity.”(George Orwell,“The prevention of literature”, 1945).

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