George Orwell Quotes - Page 24

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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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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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To accept an unorthodoxy is always to inherit unresolved contradictions

George Orwell

Ideas, Inheritance, Contradiction

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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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Writing a novel is agony.

George Orwell

Writing, Agony, Novel

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Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.

George Orwell

Heart, Differences, Feelings

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By revolution we become more ourselves, not less.

George Orwell

Revolution

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

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Except for the small revolutionary groups which exist in all countries, the whole world was determined upon preventing revolution in Spain. In particular the Communist Party, with Soviet Russia behind it, had thrown its whole weight against the revolution. It was the Communist thesis that revolution at this stage would be fatal and that what was to be aimed at in Spain was not workers' control, but bourgeois democracy. It hardly needs pointing out why 'liberal' capitalist opinion took the same line.

George Orwell

Country, Party, Russia

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.54, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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

War, Winning, Differences

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.203, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

George Orwell

Art, World, Futuristic

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.418, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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

Struggle, Writing, Personality

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.231, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

George Orwell

Children, Real, Thinking

George Orwell (2017). “The Collected Non-Fiction”, Penguin UK

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Four legs gooood, two legs baaad!

George Orwell

Two, Legs, Four

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I have no wish to take life, not even human life

George Orwell

Wish, Human Life, Humans

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.32, Penguin UK

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[T]he outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality.:; Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?

George Orwell

Men, Killing, Accepting

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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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”

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I suppose there is no place in the world where snobbery is quite so ever-present or where it is cultivated in such refined and subtle forms as in an English public school. Here at least one cannot say that English ‘education’ fails to do its job. You forget your Latin and Greek within a few months of leaving school — I studied Greek for eight or ten years, and now, at thirty-three, I cannot even repeat the Greek alphabet — but your snobbishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave.

George Orwell

Jobs, Latin, School

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1986). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: The road to Wigan Pier”

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Do you remember writing in your diary," he said, "that it did not matter whether I was a friend or an enemy, since I was at least a person who understood you and could be talked to? You were right. I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.

George Orwell

Writing, Talking, Mind

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.556, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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What is not hereditary cannot be permanent.

George Orwell

Permanent, Hereditary

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.160, Arcturus Publishing

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His whole mind and body seemed to be afflicted with an unbearable sensitivity, a sort of transparency, which made every movement, every sound, every contact, every word that he had to speak or listen to, an agony. Even in sleep he could not altogether escape form her image.

George Orwell

Sleep, Agony, Mind

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.208, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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He had moved from thought to words, and now from words to actions.

George Orwell

Action, Moved

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.253, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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

Fun, World Suffering, People

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.331, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

George Orwell

Men, Brain

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.45, Arcturus Publishing

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There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.

George Orwell

Literary Merit, Survival, Majority

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.320, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

George Orwell

Bed, Boots, Great Things

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.243, 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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