Skip to content
quotesby

About this quote

What does it mean?
Common diseases can be as cruel as weapons of war, and natural death is often slow and painful.
In plain terms
Diseases are sometimes more cruel than war weapons.
What can you take from it?
Suffering from illness is often overlooked compared to war.

Where it applies

  • reflecting on mortality
  • discussing suffering

Putting it to work

  • valuing health
  • acknowledging invisible pain

Questions to consider

  • What makes suffering meaningful?
  • How do we compare different pains?

Another view

This comparison minimizes the unique horrors of warfare.

More from George Orwell

  1. In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremend…

    Permalink to quote #35
  2. While the game of deadlocks and bottle-necks goes on, another more serious game is also being played. It is governed by two axioms. One is that there can be no…

    Permalink to quote #37
  3. The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but earth is still goi…

    Permalink to quote #34

Related quotes

  1. Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Ass…

    Lascelles AbercrombieLascelles Abercrombie quote #2
  2. But from my grave across my brow Plays no wind of healing now, And fire and ice within me fight Beneath the suffocating night.

    A. E. HousmanA. E. Housman quote #22
  3. I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the leg…

    William SaroyanWilliam Saroyan quote #49