Four legs good, two legs bad

The maxim "Four legs good, two legs bad" was born from the practical necessity of teaching Animalism to the dullest animals on the farm. After discovering that the sheep, hens, and ducks could not memorize the Seven Commandments, Snowball declared that the principles could be reduced to a single, easily remembered sentence: "Four legs good, two legs bad." He argued that this contained the essential principle of Animalism and that whoever grasped it would be safe from human influences. The birds initially objected on the grounds that they too had two legs, but Snowball proved to them that a bird's wing was an organ of propulsion, not manipulation, and should therefore be counted as a leg. The maxim was then inscribed on the end wall of the barn in letters larger than the Commandments themselves, and the sheep, having once learned it by heart, developed a great liking for it, often bleating it for hours on end in the fields.

Once the phrase became the sheep's automatic response, it was transformed into a tool of political control. At crucial moments during the Sunday meetings—especially when Snowball was making a persuasive argument, or when Napoleon needed to end discussion—the sheep would break into a chorus of "Four legs good, two legs bad," effectively drowning out any opposition. The most extreme instance occurred after Napoleon abolished the Sunday meetings and the four young porkers attempted to protest; the sheep responded with a tremendous bleating that lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, making further debate impossible. The slogan's simplicity and emotional force made it a perfect instrument for interrupting rational deliberation. It was a verbal weapon that required no thought, only volume and repetition.

The final, ironic reversal of the slogan marked the complete corruption of the original principle. When the pigs began walking on their hind legs, Squealer led the sheep out to a secluded piece of waste ground for a week to teach them a new song. On the evening they returned, the sheep burst into a new bleating: "Four legs good, two legs better!" This was repeated for five minutes, long enough to silence any protest from the other animals at the sight of pigs walking upright. The original classification—two legs as enemy, four legs as friend—had been shattered by the pigs' own bodies. Soon after, the Seven Commandments were reduced to a single sentence: "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." The old boundary between human and animal that the slogan had once defended had dissolved entirely; by the end of the novel, the pigs and the human farmers were indistinguishable in face and voice, and the phrase "Four legs good, two legs bad" had become a relic of a betrayed revolution.