George Orwell famous quotes

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
-- George Orwell

#Writing #Window #Should

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.
-- George Orwell

#Doe #Want #Journalism

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Life #People

And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.
-- George Orwell

#Dog #Book #Reading

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.
-- George Orwell

#Lying #Choices #Mankind

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
-- George Orwell

#Strength #Wisdom #Veterans Day

A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
-- George Orwell

#Men #Ugly #May

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Life #Freedom

The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .
-- George Orwell

#Modern

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Wisdom

By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.
-- George Orwell

#Writing #Effort #Leaving

He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother
-- George Orwell

#Brother #Taken #Struggle

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later:
-- George Orwell

#Attitude #Book #Mind

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.
-- George Orwell

#Book #Party #Politics

Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.
-- George Orwell

#Opposites #Devotion #Conservatism

It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.
-- George Orwell

#Fall #People #Over You

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Life #Hate

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
-- George Orwell

#Funny #Sarcasm #Equality

The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
-- George Orwell

#Real #Lefties #Division

That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
-- George Orwell

#Jobs #Wall #Class

The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
-- George Orwell

#Murder #Terrorism #Oppression

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
-- George Orwell

#Country #Money #War

What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.
-- George Orwell

#Stupidity #Instinct #Cowardice

You are a slow learner, Winston." "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
-- George Orwell

#Eye #Two #Trying

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
-- George Orwell

#Freedom #War #Ignorance

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
-- George Orwell

#Book #Insight

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

#Struggle #Book #Writing

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
-- George Orwell

#April #Cold #Clock

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

#Dream #Time #Peace

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
-- George Orwell

#Men #Intelligent #Intelligence

I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.
-- George Orwell

#Life #Talking #Mind

News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.
-- George Orwell

#Want #News #Advertising

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
-- George Orwell

#Truth #Political #Belief

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- George Orwell

#Life #Happiness #Truth

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
-- George Orwell

#Truth #Reality #Mind

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink
-- George Orwell

#Lying #War #Exercise

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
-- George Orwell

#Mad #Minorities #World

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
-- George Orwell

#Power #Intention #Relinquishing

We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.
-- George Orwell

#Believe #Facts #Shows

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
-- George Orwell

#Color #Patriotism #Atrocities

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.
-- George Orwell

#Peace #War #Self

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.
-- George Orwell

#Running #Fear #Men

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
-- George Orwell

#Peace #Patriotism #Literature

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
-- George Orwell

#Courage #Truth #Struggle

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
-- George Orwell

#Time #Freedom #Imagination

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.
-- George Orwell

#Break #Bigs

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
-- George Orwell

#Witty #Peace #Truth

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.
-- George Orwell

#Art #Latin #Struggle

We are not retreating, we are advancing in another direction. We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us.
-- George Orwell

#Sleep #Army #Night

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
-- George Orwell

#God #Atheist #Atheism

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
-- George Orwell

#Dirty #Naughty #Nasty

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.
-- George Orwell

#Men #Ideas #Brain

All art is propaganda.
-- George Orwell

#Art #Propaganda #Art Is

When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
-- George Orwell

#Blood #Enemy #Flesh

The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Enemy #Language

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 organisation 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 #Night #Pigs

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.
-- George Orwell

#Football #Children #Home

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing
-- George Orwell

#Men #Creatures

You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.
-- George Orwell

#Trying #Easy #Harder

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
-- George Orwell

#Cutting

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.
-- George Orwell

#Romantic #Hair #Smell

Never use a long word where a short one will do.
-- George Orwell

#Long #Use

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.
-- George Orwell

#Writing #People #Frightened

All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.
-- George Orwell

#Force #Fraud #Tyranny

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.
-- George Orwell

#Real #War #Practice

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.
-- George Orwell

#Writing #Wish #Doe

No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
-- George Orwell

#Believe #Animal #Decision

In the face of pain there are no heroes.
-- George Orwell

#Pain #Hero #Faces

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.
-- George Orwell

#Class #Succeed #Structure

We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.
-- George Orwell

#Enemy

In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
-- George Orwell

#Art #Writing #Long

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.
-- George Orwell

#Enemy #Nervous #Moments

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.
-- George Orwell

#Party #Past #Expression

Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.
-- George Orwell

#Writing #Successful #Artist

Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
-- George Orwell

#Life #Orthodoxy

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
-- George Orwell

#Flames #People #Desire

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
-- George Orwell

#Faces #Fit #Mask

They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening
-- George Orwell

#Reality #Events #Accepting

In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.
-- George Orwell

#Failure #Winning #Games

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.
-- George Orwell

#Art #Lying #Book

The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes
-- George Orwell

#Stars #Eye #Cost

...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
-- George Orwell

#War #Position

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
-- George Orwell

#Autobiography #Trusted

A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.
-- George Orwell

#Generations #Necklaces

He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.
-- George Orwell

#Pain #Effort #Special

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.
-- George Orwell

#Laughter #Integrity #Joy

All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.
-- George Orwell

#Views #Age #Followers

I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone.
-- George Orwell

#Punishment #Government #People

All men are enemies. All animals are comrades
-- George Orwell

#Animal #Men #Enemy

It had become usual to give Napoleon the Credit for every Successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, “Under the guidance of our leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days” or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, “thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!”...
-- George Orwell

#Successful #Eggs #Two

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.
-- George Orwell

#Lying #There Is Hope

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime ...
-- George Orwell

#Expression #Giving #Anxiety

In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
-- George Orwell

#Party #Reality #Views

The main motive for nonattachment 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

#Love #Pain #Hard Work

You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.
-- George Orwell

#Empty

If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.
-- George Orwell

#Love #Marriage #Giving

How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.
-- George Orwell

#Different #Would Be #Impossible

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.
-- George Orwell

#Darkness #Sound #Assumption

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
-- George Orwell

#Lying #Men #Giving

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist
-- George Orwell

#Inspirational #Fascists #Pacifism