George Orwell Quotes - Page 30

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Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.

George Orwell

Song, Military, Lectures

George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

George Orwell

Brother, Wall, Moving

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

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The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

George Orwell

Fighting, Frivolous

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.157, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.

George Orwell

Groups, Scarcity, Hardship

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.414, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

George Orwell

Cry, Moments, Hundred

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.169, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

George Orwell

Done, Fool

"Shooting an Elephant" (1936)

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It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand.

George Orwell

Hands, Long, Together

George Orwell (1961). “1984”

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On a ruinous wall I came upon a poster dating from the previous year and announcing that ‘six handsome bulls’ would be killed in the arena on such and such a date. How forlorn its faded colours looked. Where were the handsome bulls and the handsome bull-fighters now? It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays - for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.

George Orwell

Wall, Years, Dating

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.18, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.

George Orwell

Attitude, Writing, Emotional

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.

George Orwell

Disappointment, Law, Long

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.47, Hamilton Books

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Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop.

George Orwell

Pain, Wish, Earth

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

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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”

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Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.

George Orwell

People, Matter, Way

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.

George Orwell

Writing, Skins, Ankles

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.111, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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It had never occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work til it was coarse in the grain like an overripe turnip, could be beautiful. But is was so, and after all, he thought, why not?

George Orwell

Beautiful, Why Not, Body

George Orwell (1982). “Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism”, Harcourt

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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

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We may be together for another six months—a year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be?

George Orwell

Years, Knowing, Together

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.259, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.

George Orwell

Lying, Party, Insecurity

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.60, Arcturus Publishing

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[...] you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don't want it.

George Orwell

World, Want, This World

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

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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

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Pessimism is reactionary because it makes the very idea of improving the world impossible.

George Orwell

Ideas, World, Impossible

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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

War, Battle, Eton

The Lion and the Unicorn pt. 1, sec. 4 (1941) SeeWellington 7

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Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.

George Orwell

Country, War, Remember

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So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

George Orwell

Long, Life And Death, Humans

George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

George Orwell

War, Party, Intelligent

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.416, 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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