George Woodcock
George Woodcock
George Woodcockwas a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist and literary critic. He was also a poet and published several volumes of travel writing. In 1959 he was the founding editor of the journal Canadian Literature which was the first academic journal specifically dedicated to Canadian writing. He is most commonly known outside of Canada for his book Anarchism: A History of Libertarian Ideas and Movements...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionEssayist
Date of Birth8 May 1912
CountryCanada
They decided that unpaid leave could only be granted through the decision of a council that consisted almost entirely of scientists who couldn't understand my reasons for wanting to go so. They said no, no unpaid. So I immediately resigned.
I suppose, a person for whom freedom is the most important thing - intellectual freedom and, as far as possible, physical freedom.
You can be bound by physical things, as I am by certain sicknesses, but nevertheless you can still be free to recognize that all initiatives really come from yourself if you don't depend upon structures of government or structures of any kind.
Orwell was the sort of man who was full of grievances. He was very loyal. Once he got to know you, he was extremely loyal. He hated passionately and irrationally.
I was editing Canadian Literature. I didn't want to let Canadian Literature go, so they reached a nice compromise by which I received half a professor's salary.
I suppose I'm led to do so by the fact of what happened to my contemporaries - people whom I've admired, people who I thought were ten times better than me when I was in my twenties and early thirties. I may have been right.
When you act dramatically in that way it often has a consequence that is very negative.
My split with the university was over the fact that I had become involved with helping Tibetans in India.
It even has the same phraseology as the English orders of knighthood, companions and this sort of thing.
I began even as a boy to realize how wide the world can be for a man of free intelligence.
My early wounds were the English school system among other things. It wasn't merely the discipline, it was the ways in which boys got what was called the school spirit.
I believe in that connection between freedom and the city.
I was unpopular at school just because I was an intellectual. I always answered all the questions off the top of my head but they nevertheless resented because of that.
I don't believe in kicking away ladders. By that, I mean the ladders by which I ascended as a young writer, small magazines that didn't pay anything, and that sort of thing.