George Orwell Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• 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

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

• 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

  Party, Book, Politics

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.249, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

• 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

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

  George Orwell

  Book, Nineteen, Insight

• 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

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.315, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Some people have a knack, for example, of being able to tell when someone's lying to them. They may not know what the truth is, but they can tell when someone is trying to lead them astray or sell them something shady. I think he had that ability to an amazing degree. I also think he thought, without saying it explicitly, that you can convince a crowd of something that's not true more easily than you can one person at a time.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Book, Thinking

• The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

  George Orwell

  Book, Facts, Praise

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.265, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.316, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.

  George Orwell

  Book, Men, Rich Or Poor

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.118, Lulu.com

• The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

  George Orwell

  Country, Real, Book

  George Orwell (1953). “Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays”

• For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money.

  George Orwell

  Book, Writing, Giving

  George Orwell (1987). “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, Harvill Secker

• It reminded us that propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a meaning and a purpose - a political, social and religious purpose - that our aesthetic judgements are always coloured by our prejudices and beliefs

  George Orwell

  Religious, Art, Book

  George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

• The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.

  George Orwell

  Book, Past, Reality

  George Orwell (1976). “The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell”

• Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

  George Orwell

  Book, Majority, Doe

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

• It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

  George Orwell

  Powerful, Book, Order

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.432, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• 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

  Jobs, Book, Feelings

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.289, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.

  George Orwell

  Book, Thinking, Hatred

  George Orwell (1976). “The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell”

• Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

  George Orwell

  Book, Order, Weavers

  George Orwell (1956). “The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage”, New York : Harcourt, Brace

• The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.

  George Orwell

  Art, Book, Literature

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

• The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.

  George Orwell

  Smart, Book, Men

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.86, Lulu.com

• The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books.

  George Orwell

  Book, Cheaper

  George Orwell, Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940”, Harvill Secker

• If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.

  George Orwell

  Book, Gulliver, Lists

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I managed to get my copy of Ulysses through safely this time. I rather wish I had never read it. It gives me an inferiority complex. When I read a book like that and then come back to my own work, I feel like a eunuch who has taken a course in voice production.

  George Orwell

  Book, Taken, Voice

  George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

• Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.

  George Orwell

  Money, Book, Writing

  George Orwell (1987). “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, Harvill Secker

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