George Orwell Quotes - Page 13

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• Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

  George Orwell

  Judging, Atheism, Saint

  Shooting an Elephant (1950) "Reflections on Gandhi"

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• Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.

  George Orwell

  War, Struggle, Heart

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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• Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

  George Orwell

  Autobiography, Disgraceful, Trusted

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• ...men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.

  George Orwell

  Men, Rough, Civilized

  "Rudyard Kipling" (1942). This is the closest passage in Orwell's writings that has been found to the following quotation popularly attributed to him: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf " (or sometimes, "We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us").

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• He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

  George Orwell

  Mind, Abyss, Poetry Is

  George Orwell (1987). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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• The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war - which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destroyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action.

  George Orwell

  Religious, Spring, War

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.150, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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

  George Orwell

  Nineteen, April, Cold

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 1, ch. 1 (1949)

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• 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

  Fear, Struggle, Class

  The Road to Wigan Pier (1937) ch. 13

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• The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile.

  George Orwell

  Wisdom, Charming Smile, Clothes

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• 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

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

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• The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

  George Orwell

  Perfect, Liberty, Libertarian

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.44, Arcturus Publishing

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• Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.

  George Orwell

  Faces, Miserable, Our Lives

  George Orwell (2001). “Orwell and Politics”, p.281, Penguin UK

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• Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

  George Orwell

  Moving, Men, Thinking

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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• In the face of pain there are no heroes.

  George Orwell

  Pain, Hero, Faces

  George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.515, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you've spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers.

  George Orwell

  Dirty, Reading, Thinking

  George Orwell (1986). “Coming Up for Air”, Harvill Secker

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• It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.

  George Orwell

  Wall, Lying, Heart

  George Orwell (2003). “Nineteen Eighty-four”, Penguin Mass Market

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• Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

  George Orwell

  Democratic Socialism, Serious Work, Lines

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.314, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher's daughter.

  George Orwell

  Daughter, Writing, Way

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.268, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The belly comes before the soul.

  George Orwell

  Soul, Human Nature, Belly

  George Orwell (2000). “Essays”, p.325, Penguin UK

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• Preventive war is a crime not easily committed by a country that retains any traces of democracy.

  George Orwell

  Country, War, Democracy

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think: 1947-1948”

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• But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet --!

  George Orwell

  Morning, Horse, Party

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.168, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

  George Orwell

  Mind, Enemy, Records

  George Orwell (2009). “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story”, p.224, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

  George Orwell

  Love, Heart, Mean

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.357, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

  George Orwell

  Revolutionary, Fascists, Militia

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

  George Orwell

  Sports, War, Squash

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