James Leonard

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George Orwell
“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 that 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

Victor Hugo
“What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul”
Victor Hugo , Les Misérables

George Orwell
“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
George Orwell, 1984

Oscar Wilde
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
John F. Kennedy

179584 Our Shared Shelf — 223070 members — last activity Jan 26, 2026 06:48AM
OUR SHARED SHELF IS CURRENTLY DORMANT AND NOT MANAGED BY EMMA AND HER TEAM. Dear Readers, As part of my work with UN Women, I have started reading ...more
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This group is for anyone who loves books from different genres. Every month we have group Books of the Month which you can join, reading challenges, a ...more
169034 Non Fiction Book Club — 5048 members — last activity 0 minutes ago
This group is for anyone who enjoys Non Fiction. Genres discussed here include Histories, Autobiographies, Biographies, Memoirs, Science and Technolog ...more
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The Republic by Plato
Thought Provoking
2,877 books — 1,493 voters
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Must Read Non-Fiction
5,271 books — 4,493 voters

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