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Why is education so important

Carl William Brown — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 08:46:36 +0000

Why education is so important

Why is education so important for living a good and useful life, an article with some quotes, links and resources to stress the fundamental role of learning in our societies.

Education is crucial because it empowers individuals and strengthens societies. It fosters critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and creativity, equipping people with the knowledge needed to adapt in a fast-changing world. Education helps reduce poverty and inequality, promotes social cohesion, and encourages responsible citizenship by teaching shared values.

It also drives economic growth by creating skilled workforces, innovating industries, and supporting sustainable development. An educated population is healthier, more productive, and better able to contribute to and protect democratic values, which creates a foundation for a fairer and more resilient society.

Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company, and reflection must finish him.
John Locke

There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The limits of my language means the limits of my world.
Ludwig Wittgenstein

Education is a weapon, whose effect depends on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.
Joseph Stalin

We are born weak, we need strength; helpless, we need aid; foolish, we need reason. All that we lack at birth, all that we need when we come to man’s estate, is the gift of education.
Jean Jacques Rousseau

No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.
Assata Shakur

The purpose of education is to empower individuals to think critically.
John Locke

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.
John Ruskin

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.
Diogenes

The importance of education

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.
Chanakya

The task of the modern educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate deserts. The right defence against false sentiments is to inculcate just sentiments. By starving the sensibility of our pupils we only make them easier prey to the propagandist when he comes.
C.S. Lewis

Surely education has no meaning unless it helps you understand the vast experience of life with all its subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet. Education is the best provision for old age.
Aristotle

The first condition of education is being able to put someone to wholesome and meaningful work.
John Ruskin

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober – minded men.
Socrates

The reasons why education is so important

Why is education so important for living a good and useful life, watch these videos: all about learning and 5 main reasons why education is so important, but first of all remember what Aristotle use to say, that is: “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” And then, last but not least, since it is very important for a good living to follow this old latin proverb: “mente sana, in corpore sano”, that is “healthy mind in healthy body”, you can watch these videos about good and easy food!

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
Mahatma Gandhi

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela

Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
Robert Frost

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
Confucius

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty.
Mark Twain

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C.S. Lewis

Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
Leonardo da Vinci

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C.S. Lewis

https://www.openculture.com/ Open Culture is a prominent educational and cultural website founded in 2006 that curates high-quality, free resources for lifelong learners worldwide. It centralizes scattered web content, offering access to more than 1,700 free online courses from Universities, movies, audiobooks, ebooks, and language lessons. It is widely considered a valuable, free repository for educational media. Take online courses from the world’s top universities for free.

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Edward de Vere

Carl William Brown — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 13:28:49 +0000

Edward De Vere, the seventeenth earl of Oxford

Edward de Vere 17th Earl of Oxford was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. In this short article you can find out his relation to Shakespeare.

The Shakespeare industry is built upon a vast fictitious fantasy. Many people directly profit from this industry so therefore imagination is not free and conjecture is not cheap.
Charles Hughes

Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (12 April 1550 – 24 June 1604) was an English peer and courtier of the Elizabethan era. Oxford was heir to the second oldest earldom in the kingdom, a court favourite for a time, a sought-after patron of the arts, and noted by his contemporaries as a lyric poet and court playwright, but his volatile temperament precluded him from attaining any courtly or governmental responsibility and contributed to the dissipation of his estate. Since the 1920s, he has been among the most prominent alternative candidates proposed for the authorship of Shakespeare’s works.

In a 1578 Latin oration, Gabriel Harvey said of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford (1550–1604), “vultus tela vibrat,” which may be translated as “thy countenance shakes spears.” This may have been an inspiration for the later use of “Shakespeare” as a pen name. Pseudonyms were so common in the Elizabethan Era (called a “Golden Age” of pseudonyms), that almost every writer used one at one time or another. “Shakespeare,” as a pen name, could be a reference to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom who came to be viewed during the Renaissance as a patron of the arts and learning. She is often depicted shaking a spear. Pseudonyms were used because writings that offended the authorities could subject an author to punishment. Also, where the nobility were concerned, it was considered beneath their dignity to publish poetry, which was deemed frivolous, or plays for the public theatres, which were scandalous places where thievery, prostitution, and gambling occurred.
Tom Regnier

When I read the poems and plays through the lens of Stratford, I get much insight and greatness but only from the plays themselves. Shakespeare the man leaves no mark on the plays as far as I can access. This violates my experience of almost every other great artist I know of.
Mark Andre Alexander

“This brilliant, powerful book is a major event for everyone who cares about Shakespeare. The scholarship is surpassing – brave, original, full of surprise – and in the hands of so gifted a writer it fairly lights up the sky. Anyone who considers the Shakespeare controversy silly or a lot of old stuff is in for a particular surprise. This is scholarly detective work at its most absorbing. More, it is close analysis by a writer with a rare sense of humanity. The strange, difficult, contradictory man who emerges as the real Shakespeare, Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, is not just plausible but fascinating and wholly believable. It is hard to imagine anyone who reads the book with an open mind ever seeing Shakespeare or his works in the same way again.”
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough in his Foreword to Charlton Ogburn’s The Mysterious William Shakespeare.

And thou, no less deserving than the other two, in some things rarer, in nothing inferior, driven (as myself) to extreme shifts, a little have I to say to thee, and were it not an idolatrous oath, I would swear by sweet St. George thou art unworthy better hap sith thou dependest on so mean a stay. Base-minded men, all three of you, if by my misery you be not warned, for unto none of you (like me) sought those burrs to cleave, those puppets (I mean) that spake from our mouths, those antics garnished in our colours. Is it not strange, that I, to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that you, to whom they all have been beholding, shall (were ye in that case as I am now) be both at once of them forsaken? Yes, trust them not, for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and being an absolute Johannes factotum is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.

Statue of Athena Shake-spear allusion

O that I might entreat your rare wits to be employed in more profitable courses, and let those apes imitate your past excellence and nevermore acquaint them with your admired inventions. I know the best husband of you all will never prove an usurer, and the kindest of them all will never prove a kind nurse; yet, whilst you may, seek you better masters, for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject to the pleasure of such rude grooms. In this I might insert two more that both have writ against these buckram gentlemen, but let their own works serve to witness against their own wickedness if they persevere to maintain any more such peasants. For other newcomers, I leave them to the mercy of these painted monsters who (I doubt not) will drive the best-minded to despise them. For the rest, it skills not though they make a jest at them.
Robert Green

As an Italian writer of aphorisms, literature lover, English teacher, trader and Internet publisher I don’t think Florio was Shakespeare, for different reasons, first of all because I believe that the Shakespearean macrotext is not the miracle of just a single person, what’s more a work of art is not by an author and neither is life, as Carmelo Bene once affirmed; finally as our Juliet would say: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet.”; and last but not least Florio had all the possibilities to publish all the plays he wanted with his name, so why using a pen name, but nonetheless the matter remains a real mistery, as the life of the great national bard of England.

Anyway Florio was a great scholar, linguist, lexicographer, translator, and what’s more he almost died a poor man, so we have a lot of things in common. What we can’t absolutely deny is the enormous influence that his literary works had on the English language, culture and intertextuality of the writers of the period, included the superb Shakespeare’s production and consequently our appreciation of it. All this said, as in the market we can’t be sure of anything, the hypothesis being fascinating and what’s more even Shakespeare through Iago once said: “I am not what I am.” while Matthew Gwinne, a doctor whose pen name was “Il Candido” in a sonnet devoted to his dearly esteemed friend and fellow wrote: “I am, all that I am, Florio, thy debter.”
Carl William Brown

Oxford himself was a patron of the arts who loved theatre and poetry and commissioned various books and translations. Twenty-eight books were dedicated to him during his life. Oxford sponsored two theatre troupes: a men’s troupe and a boys’ troupe. He leased the Blackfriars Theatre in the 1580s for his boys’ troupe.
Tom Regnier

Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which is recognized as one of Shakespeare’s most influential sources, second only to the Bible, was translated into English by Arthur Golding, Oxford’s uncle. Oxford and Golding were living in the same household when the translation was being completed.
Tom Regnier

The famous “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Hamlet echoes Gerolamo Cardano’s Comforte (De Consolatione), written in 1542: “What should we account of death to be resembled to anything better than a sleep… We are assured not only to sleep, but also to die.” Oxford commissioned an English translation of Cardano’s Comforte by Thomas Bedingfield (1573) for which Oxford wrote the preface.
Tom Regnier

William Shakespeare Aphoristic dictionary

Henry Wriothesley, the Third Earl of Southampton, was a beautiful young nobleman to whom Shakespeare expressly dedicated the two narrative poems Venus and Adonis and Rape of Lucrece. Many scholars believe that Southampton was also the “Fair Youth” of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Around the time that the Sonnets are thought to have been written, Lord Burghley was trying to persuade a reluctant Southampton to marry Oxford’s daughter Elizabeth, who was also, of course, Burghley’s granddaughter. In the first 17 sonnets, the poet encourages the Fair Youth to marry and procreate. It would have been entirely presumptuous for William Shakspere, a commoner, to write sonnets offering marital advice to a young nobleman. The Sonnets make much more sense if they are seen as coming from an older nobleman to a younger one whom the older nobleman hopes will become his son-in-law.
Tom Regnier

Oxford’s handwritten notations in his personal copy of the Geneva Bible, which now resides in the Folger Shakespeare Library, show a strong correlation to Biblical references in Shakespeare’s works, as Dr. Roger Stritmatter demonstrated in his Ph.D. dissertation at the University of Massachusetts. The more often a Biblical passage is referenced in Shakespeare’s works, the more likely it is to have been marked in Oxford’s Geneva Bible.
Tom Regnier

Oxford had three daughters, just as King Lear did. And just as Lear divided his kingdom among his daughters while he still lived, Oxford placed his family lands in trust for the benefit of his daughters while he lived.
Tom Regnier

Shakespeare’s Sonnets were first published in 1609. There are indications on the dedication page that the author was no longer living at that time. First, the dedication is signed by the publisher, Thomas Thorpe, not by the author, suggesting that the author was not alive to write the dedication. More significantly, the dedication refers to the author as “ever-living.” This is a phrase that was used metaphorically to refer to a person who was no longer alive, but who would live on through his works in our minds and hearts. The Earl of Oxford was no longer living in 1609, while the man from Stratford, who is usually credited with writing the works of Shakespeare, would live on for another seven years. Stratfordian scholars have never been able to explain why the phrase “ever-living” would have been applied to a living person.
Tom Regnier

Top 18 Reasons Why Edward de Vere (Oxford) Was Shakespeare

Shakespeare Authorship Sourcebook

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George Orwell Thoughts

Carl William Brown — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 15:18:23 +0000

George Orwell thoughts and ideas

George Orwell Thoughts, ideas, political views, art considerations, social commitment; a summary post that illustrates the whole philosophy of this great author.

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States …
George Orwell

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac. In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind. War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. (On the manipulation of language for political ends.) We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
George Orwell, Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn’t merely come back to you, you’re actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.
George Orwell, Coming Up for Air

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell

I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.
George Orwell, Why I Write

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
George Orwell, Why I Write

George Orwell thoughts on writing and politics

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.
George Orwell, A Collection of Essays

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside. Quite a number of people console themselves with this thought, now that totalitarianism in one form or another is visibly on the up-grade in every part of the world. Out in the street the loudspeakers bellow, the flags flutter from the rooftops, the police with their tommy-guns prowl to and fro, the face of the Leader, four feet wide, glares from every hoarding; but up in the attics the secret enemies of the regime can record their thoughts in perfect freedom — that is the idea, more or less.
George Orwell, “As I Please”, Tribune, April 28, 1944

People are wrong when they think that an unemployed man only worries about losing his wages; on the contrary, an illiterate man, with the work habit in his bones, needs work even more than he needs money. An educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the worst evils of poverty. But a man like Paddy, with no means of filling up time, is as miserable out of work as a dog on the chain. That is why it is such nonsense to pretend that those who have ‘come down in the world’ are to be pitied above all others.
The man who really merits pity is the man who has been down from the start,
and faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind.”
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:
1. Could I put it more shortly?
2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.”
George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Seven Commandments:
Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
No animal shall wear clothes.
No animal shall sleep in a bed.
No animal shall drink alcohol.
No animal shall kill any other animal.
All animals are equal.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

“Comrades! he cried. You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organization of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.
George Orwell, Animal Farm

George Orwell thoughts and opinions on the art of writing

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

It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.
George Orwell, 1984

Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality.
George Orwell

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.
George Orwell, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950

Totalitarianism … does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. But to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops. This was well illustrated by the Spanish civil war. To many English intellectuals the war was a deeply moving experience, but not an experience about which they could write sincerely. There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading.
George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for “non-attachment” is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.
George Orwell, Reflections on Gandhi

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist.
George Orwell, Books v. Cigarettes

George Orwell on writing books

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty?
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London

A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into; the other functions and faculties may be more godlike, but in point of time they come afterwards. A man dies and is buried, and all his words and actions are forgotten, but the food he has eaten lives after him in the sound or rotten bones of his children. I think it could be plausibly argued that changes of diet are more important than changes of dynasty or even of religion….Yet it is curious how seldom the all-importance of food is recognized. You see statues everywhere to politicians, poets, bishops, but none to cooks or bacon-curers or market gardeners.
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

The war, therefore if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that the hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word “war,” therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that is exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and has been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three superstates, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This–although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense – is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.
George Orwell, 1984

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practiced today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.
George Orwell, 1984

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The post George Orwell Thoughts first appeared on The World of English.

Saint Valentines Day

Carl William Brown — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 09:34:16 +0000

Saint Valentine’s Day History and quotes

Saint Valentines day, the lovers day, story, legends, celebrations and quotes that made Valentine’s day the most important occasion for the triumph of love.

Without Valentine’s Day, February would be… well, January.
Jim Gaffigan

I claim there ain’t Another Saint As great as Valentine.
Ogden Nash

If you are really interested in this topic and you want more quotes you can also download and read this book of Quotes and aphorisms on Love Edited by Carl William Brown

Quotes on love

Oh, if it be to choose and call thee mine, love, thou art every day my Valentine!
Thomas Hood

Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
George Edward Moore

What better thing for Valentine’s Day than to do an act of sport, as Shakespeare called it?
Carl William Brown

I got a Valentine’s Day card from my girl. It said, ‘Take my heart! Take my arms! Take my lips!’ Which is just like her. Keeping the best part for herself.
Robert Orben

Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.
William Shakespeare

Love is not finding someone to live with; it’s finding someone you can’t live without.
Raphael Montanez Ortiz

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.
William Shakespeare

God is a mystery, Faith is a mystery, Love is a mystery, Death is a mystery! Hey, but wait a bit, I have never liked mysteries.
Carl William Brown

The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.
Victor Hugo

Love is the poetry of the senses.
Honore de Balzac

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.
Aristotle

Love is a game that two can play and both win.
Eva Gabor

When love is not madness, it is not love.
Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
Albert Einstein

Saint Valentine’s Day quotes

One word Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.
Sophocles

We loved with a love that was more than love.
Edgar Allan Poe

Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.
Oscar Wilde

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Laozi

Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be.
William Wordsworth

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If my Valentine you won’t be, I’ll hang myself on your Christmas tree.
Ernest Hemingway

If only St. Valentine was around to see his memory celebrated through the mindless marketing of whipping cream and lingerie.
Dov Davidoff

If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?
Dorothy Parker

Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.
Karl A. Menninger

Today is Valentine’s Day – or, as men like to call it, Extortion Day!
Jay Leno

from your Valentine

Saint Valentine (Italian: San Valentino, Latin: Valentinus) known as Saint Valentine of Rome was a widely recognized 3rd-century Roman saint, commemorated in Christianity on February 14. The name “Valentine” derived from valens (worthy, strong, powerful), was popular in Late Antiquity. About eleven other saints having the name Valentine are commemorated in the Roman Catholic Church.

From the High Middle Ages his Saints’ Day has been associated with a tradition of courtly love. He is also a patron saint of epilepsy, which is a central nervous system (neurological) disorder in which brain activity becomes abnormal, causing seizures or periods of unusual behavior, sensations, and sometimes loss of awareness.

Saint Valentine’s Day story and legends

Valentine’s Day occurs every February 14. Across the United States and in other places around the world, candy, flowers and gifts are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine. But who is this mysterious saint and where did these traditions come from? Find out about the history of Valentine’s Day, from the ancient Roman ritual of Lupercalia that welcomed spring to the card-giving customs of Victorian England.

The history of Valentine’s Day, and the story of its patron saint, is therefore shrouded in mystery. We do know that February has long been celebrated as a month of romance, and that St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. But who was Saint Valentine, and how did he become associated with this ancient rite?

Saint Valentine was a clergyman, either a priest or a bishop, in the Roman Empire who ministered to persecuted Christians. He was martyred and his body buried at a Christian cemetery on the Via Flaminia close to the Ponte Milvio to the north of Rome, on February 14, which has been observed as the Feast of Saint Valentine (Saint Valentine’s Day) since 496 AD.

Relics of him were kept in the Church and Catacombs of San Valentino in Rome, which “remained an important pilgrim site throughout the Middle Ages until the relics of St. Valentine were transferred to the church of Santa Prassede during the pontificate of Nicholas IV”. His skull, crowned with flowers, is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome; other relics of him were taken to Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland, where they remain; this house of worship continues to be a popular place of pilgrimage, especially on Saint Valentine’s Day, for those seeking love.

The Catholic Encyclopedia and other hagiographical sources speak of three Saints Valentine that appear in connection with February 14. One was a Roman priest, another the bishop of Interamna (modern Terni, Italy) both buried along the Via Flaminia outside Rome, at different distances from the city. The third was said to be a saint who suffered on the same day with a number of companions in the Roman province of Africa, of whom nothing else is known.

Saint Valentine is commemorated in the Anglican Communion and the Lutheran Churches on February 14. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, he is recognized on July 6; in addition, the Eastern Orthodox Church observes the feast of Hieromartyr Valentine, Bishop of Interamna, on July 30. In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church removed his name from the General Roman Calendar, but continues to recognize him as a saint, listing him as such in the February 14 entry in the Roman Martyrology, and authorizing liturgical veneration of him on February 14 in any place where that day is not devoted to some other obligatory celebration, in accordance with the rule that on such a day the Mass may be that of any saint listed in the Martyrology for that day.

The inconsistency in the identification of the saint is replicated in the various vitae that are ascribed to him. A common hagiography describes Saint Valentine as a priest of Rome or as the former Bishop of Terni, an important town of Umbria, in central Italy. While under house arrest of Judge Asterius, and discussing his faith with him, Valentinus (the Latin version of his name) was discussing the validity of Jesus. The judge put Valentinus to the test and brought to him the judge’s adopted blind daughter. If Valentinus succeeded in restoring the girl’s sight, Asterius would do whatever he asked.

Saint Valentines Day

Valentinus, praying to God, laid his hands on her eyes and the child’s vision was restored. Immediately humbled, the judge asked Valentinus what he should do. Valentinus replied that all of the idols around the judge’s house should be broken, and that the judge should fast for three days and then undergo the Christian sacrament of baptism. The judge obeyed and, as a result of his fasting and prayer, freed all the Christian inmates under his authority. The judge, his family, and his forty-four member household of adult family members and servants were baptized. Valentinus was later arrested again for continuing to evangelize and was sent to the prefect of Rome, to the emperor Claudius Gothicus (Claudius II) himself.

Claudius took a liking to him until Valentinus tried to convince Claudius to embrace Christianity, whereupon Claudius refused and condemned Valentinus to death, commanding that Valentinus either renounce his faith or he would be beaten with clubs and beheaded. Valentinus refused and Claudius’ command was executed outside the Flaminian Gate February 14, 269. Other stories suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons, where they were often beaten and tortured. An embellishment to this account states that before his execution, Saint Valentine wrote a note to Asterius’s daughter signed “from your Valentine”, which is said to have “inspired today’s romantic missives”, an expression that is still in use today.

Although the truth behind the Valentine legends is murky, the stories all emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic and, most importantly, romantic figure. By the Middle Ages, perhaps thanks to this reputation, Valentine would become one of the most popular saints in England and France. While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial, which probably occurred around A.D. 270, others claim that the Christian church may have decided to place St. Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to “Christianize” the pagan celebration of Lupercalia.

Celebrated at the ides of February, or February 15, Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus. To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.

They would then strip the goat’s hide into strips, dip them into the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, gently slapping both women and crop fields with the goat hide. Far from being fearful, Roman women welcomed the touch of the hides because it was believed to make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would each choose a name and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage.

Lupercalia survived the initial rise of Christianity but was outlawed, as it was deemed “un-Christian”, at the end of the 5th century, when Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day. It was not until much later, however, that the day became definitively associated with love. During the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of Valentine’s Day should be a day for romance.

Saint Valentines Celebrations

The English poet Geoffrey Chaucer was the first to record St. Valentine’s Day as a day of romantic celebration in his 1375 poem “Parliament of Foules,” writing, ““For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day / Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.” Valentine greetings were popular as far back as the Middle Ages, though written Valentine’s didn’t begin to appear until after 1400.

The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written in 1415 by Charles, Duke of Orleans, to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. (The greeting is now part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England.) Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

Cupid is often portrayed on Valentine’s Day cards as a naked cherub launching arrows of love at unsuspecting lovers. But the Roman God Cupid has his roots in Greek mythology as the Greek god of love, Eros. Accounts of his birth vary; some say he is the son of Nyx and Erebus; others, of Aphrodite and Ares; still others suggest he is the son of Iris and Zephyrus or even Aphrodite and Zeus (who would have been both his father and grandfather).

According to the Greek Archaic poets, Eros was a handsome immortal played with the emotions of Gods and men, using golden arrows to incite love and leaden ones to sow aversion. It wasn’t until the Hellenistic period that he began to be portrayed as the mischievous, chubby child he’d become on Valentine’s Day cards. In addition to the United States, Valentine’s Day is celebrated in Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, France and Australia. In Great Britain, Valentine’s Day began to be popularly celebrated around the 17th century.

By the middle of the 18th, it was common for friends and lovers of all social classes to exchange small tokens of affection or handwritten notes, and by 1900 printed cards began to replace written letters due to improvements in printing technology. Ready-made cards were an easy way for people to express their emotions in a time when direct expression of one’s feelings was discouraged. Cheaper postage rates also contributed to an increase in the popularity of sending Valentine’s Day greetings. Americans probably began exchanging hand-made valentines in the early 1700s. In the 1840s, Esther A. Howland began selling the first mass-produced valentines in America.

Howland, known as the “Mother of the Valentine,” made elaborate creations with real lace, ribbons and colorful pictures known as “scrap.” Today, according to the Greeting Card Association, an estimated 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year, making Valentine’s Day the second largest card-sending holiday of the year (more cards are sent at Christmas). Women purchase approximately 85 percent of all valentines.

Saint Valentine wishes cards

The 25th of January is the most romantic day of the year in Wales. As a matter of fact on this day, St. Dwynwen is celebrated. She is the Welsh patron saint of lovers. Dydd Santes Dwynwen is the Welsh equivalent of St. Valentine’s day. She was a fourth-century princess, who was unlucky in love. She became a nun and prayed for others to have better luck.

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The Olympic Games

Carl William Brown — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 10:46:56 +0000

The Olympic Games

The Olympic Games short story, an article by English-Culture.com blog for sport lovers and students of English all over the world. Welcome to the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games.

Welcome to the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games website. The Olympic Winter Games return to Europe, the birthplace of Alpine skiing, encompassing a large portion of Italy’s breathtaking mountains and covering an area of 22,000 square kilometres. From 6 to 22 February 2026, around 2,900 athletes from over 90 National Olympic Committees will compete in 116 events on ice and snow, in eight sports and 16 disciplines. The 2026 Olympic Winter Games will take place from 6 to 22 February, while the 2026 Paralympic Games will take place from 6 to 15 March.

Olimpiadi invernali Milano Cortina 2026

If you want to know more about the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games visit its website. Follow the worlds top athletes as they go for gold in France (Jul 26-Aug 11, 2024). Paralympic Games – Wednesday 28 August to Sunday 8 September.

The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.
Pierre de Coubertin

The Olympics remain the most compelling search for excellence that exists in sport, and maybe in life itself.
Dawn Fraser

The Olympics are a wonderful metaphor for world cooperation, the kind of international competition that’s wholesome and healthy, an interplay between countries that represents the best in all of us.
John Williams

The Olympic Games have a history of about twenty eight hundred years. They are so called because they were first held at a town called Olympia in ancient Greece near Mount Olympus in Greece in 778 B.C. in honour of the Greek God Zeus. These games were held once in every four years, up to 394 A.D. when they were stopped by a royal order of the Emperor of Rome. When they were stopped, competitions were held in literature, arts, dance and music besides sports.

The Olympic Games were revived in 1894 by the effort of a French nobleman, Pierre-de-Coubertin, who founded the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in that year. As a result, the Olympics shifted away from pastime, to allow the participation of professional athletes. Today, the Olympic Games are the world’s largest athletic skill and competitive sport games. More than 200 nations participate in these games. Generally, the games occur every four years.

Being the Olympic Games the world’s number one sports event, for thousands of athletes they mean a chance to reach glory, but that is not all the games stand for. They are also an important symbol for billions of people around the globe, a symbol of hope peace and friendly co-operation between nations. There was always a flame at the ancient Games, symbol of We search for perfection and victory but it was not included in the modern games until 1928 in Amsterdam. It is said that it was lit at Olympia from the rays of the sun. It is carried to the Games by a series of runners, and it burns in the stadium throughout the events.

The Olympic Games short composition

The ancient Olympics had some differences from the modern Games. There were fewer events, and only free men who spoke Greek could compete, instead of athletes from any country. Women were not allowed to even watch the games on penalty of death let alone play in them. Both the modern and Ancient Olympics have close similarities in their purpose and in their problems. Now 13000 athletes compete in 33 different sports in Olympic Games. The world has already seen 29 Olympic Games. The 30th Olympic Games took place in London in 2012. Now a days, the games become more popular to the audiences and the competitors.

The Olympics where held in Athens (Greece) in 1984. From then onwards the modern Olympic Games are being held once in every four years. There was a break, however, during the period of World War I and World War II. The 20th Olympics were held in 1972 at Munich (Germany). Later Olympics were held at Montreal, Moscow, Los Angeles, Seoul, Barcelona, Atlanta, Sydney, Athens, Beijing, London and Rio de Janeiro. The 2016 Summer Olympics (Portuguese: Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially known as the Games of the XXXI Olympiad and commonly known as Rio 2016, was a major international multi-sport event celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 5 to 21 August 2016.

More than 11,000 athletes from 205 National Olympic Committees, including first time entrants Kosovo, South Sudan, and the Refugee Olympic Team, took part. With 306 sets of medals, the games featured 28 Olympic sports, including rugby sevens and golf, which were added to the Olympic program in 2009. These sporting events took place at 33 venues in the host city, and at five in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, Salvador, Brasília, and Manaus.

The next 2020 Summer Olympics game will take place in Tokyo, they are planned to be held from 24 July to 9 August 2020. The city was announced as the host at the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires on 7 September 2013. It will also become the largest city ever in Asia to host the Summer Olympics, a distinction currently held by Seoul, which hosted the 1988 Summer Olympics. It will be the second time that Tokyo hosts the Olympics; it previously hosted the 1964 games.

The Olympic Games attract athletes of different countries, from all parts of the world. It is a symbol of international friendship and brotherhood. The Olympic symbol consists of give rings or circles linked together. The five rings represent five different continents – Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and America. The linking represents unity. The five rings are of five different colours. They are Blue, Yellow, Black, Green and Red. The Olympic flag has interlinking rings on plain white background. The torch is first lit at Olympic in Greece and then taken to the place of meet by relay runners. Each athlete, who takes part in the games, has also to take an oath that he would respect and abide by the rules of the game.

The Olympic Games English-culture.com

Competitions are held generally in the following games and sports and some others not quoted here: archery, athletics, badminton, baseball, basketball, boxing, canoeing, cycling, equestrian sports, fencing, football, gymnastics, handball, hockey, judo, modern penthalan, rowing, shooting, swimming, table tennis, tennis, volleyball, weightlifting, wrestling and yachting.

There are also Paralympic athletics games that are sports practiced by athletes with a physical disability who have competed at separate international events since 1952. It is governed by the International Paralympic Committee through its World Para Athletics subcommittee, and has been one of the sports at the Summer Paralympic Games since 1960. Rules for the sport are adapted from those set forth by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). The majority of rules for Paralympic athletics are the same as those for able-bodied competitions.

The Olympic flag is another very important symbol too. The five circles on it represent the five continents, each circle is a different colour, blue, black, red, yellow and green (all against a white background) and every national flag contains at least one of these six colours. Nowadays the games are officially opened by the host country’s monarch or political leader. There is a huge display of song, dance and music by the host country, the flame is lit, and the Olympic flag is raised while one athlete says these words: «In the name of all competitors, I promise that we will take part in the Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, in the spirit of sportsmanship for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams».

There have been two Olympic eras, ancient and modern. The modern era began in 1896 in Greece (like the ancient games) and will celebrate its centenary in Atlanta, USA. It all began when a Frenchman, called Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the Games. He was a French aristocrat who was fascinated by the Ancient Olympics, so he decided in 1889 to try and revive them. He thought that the Games represented ideals which the modern world badly needed, cooperation between nations, honour, fairness and high morals Baron de Coubertin organized an international conference which took place in June 1894 at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

It was during this conference that the International Olympic Committee was set up, two very important decisions were made, that is Olympic Games would take place in Athens in 1896 and athletes from thirteen different countries would take part in the first modern Olympics. Earlier, athletes who won were crowned by olive branches. In modern times, the winners are awarded medals and certificates. Those who come first, are awarded gold medals. Those who stand second are awarded silver medals and those who are third are awarded bronze medals.

The Olympic Games spirit

The Olympic Winter Games (official name) (French: Jeux olympiques d’hiver) is a major international sporting event held once every four years, for sports practised on snow and ice. The first Winter Olympics, the 1924 Winter Olympics, was held in Chamonix, France. The original five sports (broken into nine disciplines) were bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, Nordic skiing (consisting of the disciplines military patrol, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, and ski jumping), and skating (consisting of the disciplines figure skating and speed skating).

The Games were held every four years from 1924 to 1936, interrupted in 1940 and 1944 by World War II, and resumed in 1948. Until 1992 the Winter and Summer Olympic Games were held in the same years, but in accordance with a 1986 decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to place the Summer and Winter Games on separate four-year cycles in alternating even-numbered years, the next Winter Olympics after 1992 was in 1994.

There have been several boycotts of the Olympics by various countries. The first came in 1956, when the Egyptian, Lebanese, and Iraqi teams boycotted the Melbourne Games to protest the invasion of Egypt earlier that year by the United Kingdom, France, and Israel. Major boycotts of the Olympics occurred again in 1976, 1980, and 1984 over various issues. The issue that prompted the 1980 boycott of the Moscow Games was the 1979 invasion of Afghanistan by the USSR.

From the 1940s to the 1980s, the IOC also had to deal with the political problems caused by divided nations. One dilemma concerned the Chinese Olympic team, after the political division of China in 1949 into the People’s Republic of China on the mainland and the so-called Republic of China on the island of Taiwan. Another issue was the 1949 political division of Germany into East Germany and West Germany. This raised the question of whether there was to be one German Olympic team or two. The IOC tried to solve this problem by insisting on a combined German team.

Terrorism has also darkened the Olympic ideal at several different Games. In the midst of the 1972 Munich Games, the Olympic movement experienced its most tragic hour. A band of Palestinian terrorists made their way into the Olympic village (where most athletes live during the Games), murdered two members of the Israeli team, and took nine hostages. When the IOC, meeting in emergency session, learned that a gunfight had broken out and that all nine hostages were dead, along with five of the terrorists, the Games were suspended for a day. The IOC’s controversial decision to resume the Games that year was endorsed by the Israeli government.

Olympic Games Diving

Having survived a century of warfare and political turmoil, the Olympic Games have become a gigantic global event in recent years, gaining more popularity and generating more money than ever before. A great deal of this popularity and wealth is due to the development of satellite communications and global telecasts. Not only can more and more people see the Games, but the television rights to the Games can be sold for hundreds of millions of dollars. With more money, the IOC can also subsidize the development of sports in less affluent nations.

In return for their money, however, television networks have gained a strong influence on when, where, and how the Olympics will take place. The Olympic movement has also become dependent on multinational corporations, who pay millions of dollars to become official sponsors of the game and to use Olympic symbols in their advertisements. This has led to the commercialization of the Olympic movement.

To conclude we can say that the main aims of the Olympics are to promote sport, to create a more friendly, peaceful world, to spread Olympic principles and to bring athletes together in a great sports festival every four years. We have to be fans of the Olympics because they make us feel optimistic, work together and do our best disregarding economical or political considerations. That’s why the Games represent a rare positive symbol for our problematic, chaotic and cruel world.

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Olympic games quotes

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