George Orwell Quotes - Page 23

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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

Time, Children, Humorous

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.

George Orwell

Argument, Found, Ifs

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.20, Hamilton Books

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When you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don't mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met and spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to feel any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel I ought to - like the Labour M.P.s who get patted on the back by dukes and are lost forever more.

George Orwell

Circles, Ideas, Forever

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The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. ... War is Peace.

George Orwell

War, Nineteen, Becoming

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.431, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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They clichés will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself.

George Orwell

Thinking, Important, Needs

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In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some connection to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, "just to keep the people frightened."

George Orwell

War, Party, Government

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.335, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.

George Orwell

Summer, Peace, War

1939 Coming Up For Air, pt.2, ch.1.

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Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

George Orwell

Funny, Dirty, Naughty

"The Art of Donald McGill" (1941)

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The Seven Commandments: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal.

George Orwell

Sleep, Animal, Wings

George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.21, Penguin UK

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During part of 1941 and 1942, when the Luftwaffe was busy in Russia, the German radio regaled its home audience with stories of devastating air raids on London. Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purpose of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they? The answer is: If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls they didn't happen.

George Orwell

Fall, Home, Russia

George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

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Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings. If one could follow it to its psychological roots, one would, I believe, find that the main motive for "non-attachment" 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

Pain, Believe, Hard Work

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “Our job is to make life worth living, 1949-1950”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?

George Orwell

Block, Men, Stones

Coming Up for Air pt. 1, ch. 3 (1939) See Cyril Connolly 3

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The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.

George Orwell

Past, Race, Years

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.139, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put if off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

George Orwell

Life, Differences, Long

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.299, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person.

George Orwell

Doctrine, Instance, Persons

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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Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.

George Orwell

Political, Revolution, Needs

'Inside the Whale' (1940) 'Charles Dickens'

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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

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To accept an unorthodoxy is always to inherit unresolved contradictions

George Orwell

Ideas, Inheritance, Contradiction

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All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

George Orwell

Selfish, Lying, Writing

1946 'Why I Write'.

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When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

George Orwell

Leadership, Courage, Empowering Others

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.114, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.

George Orwell

Cells, Organisms, Weariness

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

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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

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Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.

George Orwell

Football, Hurt, Games

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.194, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

George Orwell

Thinking, Everyday, Phrases

George Orwell (1958). “Selected writings”

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No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.

George Orwell

Children, Views, Childhood

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Born: June 25, 1903
Died: January 21, 1950
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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