Ennyman's Territory: "You Can't Make an Omelette without Breaking Eggs."

Tuesday, November 4, 2025

"You Can't Make an Omelette without Breaking Eggs."

Eric Blair, a.k.a. George Orwell

Here's a pithy maxim that I've heard any number of times, but most recently it came in the form of this anecdote.

Orwell & the Marxist:
Orwell points out all the failures of Stalin and Marxism, the tens of millions who died. The Marxist defends this by saying, "You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."
Orwell replies: "Where's the omelette."

Clever. How often people justify "collateral damage"on behalf of their "omelette."

So I decided to go further and verify this before sharing it. Here's what I found:

The anecdote as described—George Orwell directly confronting a Marxist defender of Stalinism with the retort "Where's the omelette?" in a personal exchange—is likely fictional or unsubstantiated folklore. There's evidently no verifiable historical record of this specific conversation occurring.

Orwell was indeed a fierce critic of Stalinist atrocities, documenting them in works like Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945), and he frequently encountered pro-Soviet Marxists during the 1930s Spanish Civil War and in British intellectual circles. However, no diaries, letters, biographies, or contemporary accounts confirm this exact dialogue. It appears to be a modern summation of Orwell's broader rhetorical style and writings, popularized as a pithy quote to illustrate the failure of communist promises.

Digging further, the story's roots lie in Orwell's own essays, where he critiques the "ends justify the means" rationale used by Stalin's apologists. The core phrase—"You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs"—originated in French as On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des œufs, has been attributed to a fictional diplomat in a 1924 satirical newspaper (Comic-Finance) to downplay World War I casualties. Still earlier we find the idea promulgated by Robespierre in the context of the French Revolution.

Orwell referenced it directly in his 1943 essay "Catastrophic Gradualism" (also published as "Spilling the Spanish Beans" in some collections), responding to delays in socialist progress under Soviet influence:

The formula usually employed is ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ And if one replies, ‘Yes, but where is the omelette?’, the answer is likely to be: ‘Oh well, you can’t expect everything to happen all in a moment.’

This passage, written amid Orwell's disillusionment with Stalin's purges (which killed tens of millions via famine, gulags, and executions), forms the anecdote's foundation. It is therefore not inconceivable that a "Marxist defender" might be lacerated in such a way by Orwell, who "points out all the failures" in his lucid, clear-eyed rebuttal.

As we dig deeper still we can see how this story gained traction as a meme-like quip in the late 20th century, especially post-Cold War, to mock failed communist regimes. It appears in:

George Will's 2016 Washington Post column on Fidel Castro, framing it as Orwell's "acid" reply to 1930s Stalin apologists.
Similar op-eds in The Australian Financial Review (2016) and Socialist Viewpoint (2007), tying it to utopian failures.
Online discussions, e.g., TV Tropes (2009) calling it "popular but likely apocryphal," and X posts recirculating it as a direct quote (e.g., from 2023 and 2025).

Bottom Line: It seems to be a faithful encapsulation of Orwell's anti-totalitarian wit but not a literal event—more a cultural shorthand for questioning revolutionary violence without results.

Related Orwell Links

George Orwell's "How the Poor Die": Exploring Themes of Inequality, Neglect and Other Grim Realities

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2024/09/george-orwells-how-poor-die-exploring.html

George Orwell on Wells, Hitler and "Patriotism vs. the World State"

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/07/george-orwell-on-wells-hitler-and.html

George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/08/orwells-homage-to-catalonia-is.html

Orwell on Media Mischief

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/11/orwell-on-media-mischief.html

Orwell's Homage to Catalonia Is Instructive on Many Levels, Plus a Good Read

https://pioneerproductions.blogspot.com/2021/08/orwells-homage-to-catalonia-is.html

Flashback Friday: Did you Know George Orwell Took a Stand Against Paperbacks?