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Home
Authors
George Orwell
British
Author
About the author
War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Being
#War
War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Will
#Winning
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Past
#Present
#Future
When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
George Orwell,
British
Author
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Rebellion
#Funny
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Hearing
#Arguments
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Men
#Night
#Violence
#Harm
#Sleep
#Visit
#Beds
We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Will
#Nothing
#May
#Class
#Middle class
Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Battle
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Now
#First
#Men
#Duty
#Obvious
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Language
#Sound
#Wind
#Lies
#Appearance
#Murder
The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Day
#Idea
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
#Evil
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Will
#Act
#Truth
#Deceit
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
#Country
#Profit
To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Civilization
#Doubt
#Cities
#Germany
To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Fight
To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Love
#People
#Nothing
#Being
There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
#Difference
#Progress
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Ideas
#Wrong
The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Will
#World
#History
#Truth
#Lies
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
#Ending
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,
British
Author
#Hearing
#Remarkable
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#People
#Men
#Night
#Violence
#Sleep
#Beds
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Strength
#War
#Freedom
#Peace
#Ignorance
#Slavery
Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Life
#Men
#Happiness
Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Class
#Patriotism
#Hatred
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Order
#Revolution
#Dictatorship
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Time
#Defense
#Writing
#Speech
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Love
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Want
#Time
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Age
#Feelings
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Truth
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Reform
#Equality
#Revolution
#Manners
#Wealth
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Power
#Self
#Hunger
#Nationalism
We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Food
#May
#Machine
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Life
#People
#Fun
#Balance
#Suffering
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.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#End
#Power
#Order
#Revolution
#Dictatorship
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Men
#Development
Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Want
#People
#Temptation
#Saints
Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#End
#Language
#Chaos
#Improvement
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Evil
#Hell
#Civilization
#Mankind
#Heaven
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,
British
Author
#Man
#Animals
Liberal: a power worshipper without power.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Power
Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Language
#Creation
#Poets
#Workers
Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.
George Orwell,
British
Author
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,
British
Author
#Nothing
#Prose
#Personality
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Fear
#Democracy
#Country
#Word
#Meaning
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 squirting out ink.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Words
#Enemy
#Language
#Insincerity
Good writing is like a windowpane.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Writing
Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Myths
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Thought
#Language
Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Worth
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Power
#Mind
#Beliefs
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Act
#Truth
#Deceit
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell,
British
Author
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Life
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#People
#Responsibility
#Sense
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,
British
Author
#War
#Act
#Self
For a creative writer possession of the "truth" is less important than emotional sincerity.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Writer
#Sincerity
#Possession
Four legs good, two legs bad.
George Orwell,
British
Author
The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Time
#Man
#Personality
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Want
#Right
#People
#Freedom
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Religion
#Christian
#Socialism
Happiness can exist only in acceptance.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Happiness
#Acceptance
He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#God
I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Education
#Doubt
#Punishment
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Liberty
#Vigilance
I'm fat, but I'm thin inside... there's a thin man inside every fat man.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Man
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Want
#Right
#People
#Liberty
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Right
#Politics
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Want
#Vision
#Future
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Time
#Act
#Truth
#Deceit
In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Age
#Lies
#Politics
#Folly
#Hatred
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Freedom
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Saints
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
#Act
#Labor
#Destruction
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Being
#Perfection
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.
George Orwell,
British
Author
The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Books
The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Earth
#Police
#Sun
#Lies
#Cities
#Bombs
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Prose
#Literature
The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Being
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#First
#Men
#Duty
#Obvious
Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Will
#Practice
#Society
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#People
#Thought
#Fire
Big Brother is watching you.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Brother
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Words
#Nothing
#Play
#War
#Violence
#Pleasure
#Rules
#Hatred
#Jealousy
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell,
British
Author
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Feeling
#Books
#Job
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Progress
#Illusion
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Rebellion
A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Family
#Wrong
#Control
#England
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Man
#Virtue
Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Advertising
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Animals
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#People
#Thinking
#Years
#Past
#Future
#Facts
#Obvious
#Wishes
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#People
#War
#Fighting
#Lies
#Hatred
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Trying
#Flying
Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#Reason
#Eyes
#Faces
#Ugliness
Serious sport is war minus the shooting.
George Orwell,
British
Author
#War
One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.
George Orwell,
British
Author