George Orwell Quotes - Page 6

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• Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.

  George Orwell

  Animal, Night, Pigs

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Orthodoxy is the ability to say two and two make five when faith requires it.

  George Orwell

  Faith, Two, Orthodoxy

  "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Book by George Orwell, 1949.

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• Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

  George Orwell

  Jealousy, Sports, War

  "The Sporting Spirit" (1945)

  97 Copy quote

• The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

  George Orwell

  Life, Wisdom, Believe

  Shooting an Elephant 'Reflections on Gandhi'

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• A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature

  George Orwell

  Hate, Men, Receiving

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.132, Lulu.com

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• Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

  George Orwell

  Reality, Bumps, Belief

  After World War II; quoted in the London Financial Times, 13 May 2003.

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• There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Crazy, Believe

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• [A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.

  George Orwell

  Would Be, Use, World

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

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• A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a
  failure, and then fail all the more completely because he
  drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the
  English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because
  our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language
  makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

  George Orwell

  Men, Ugly, May

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

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• In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Animal, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

  George Orwell

  Country, Political, Democracy

  George Orwell (1968). “The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell”

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• As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

  George Orwell

  Christian, Political, Advertising

  The Road toWigan Pier ch. 11 (1937)

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• To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

  George Orwell

  Dirty, Fighting, Survival

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• We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?

  George Orwell

  Running, Military, Believe

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.174, HMH

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• All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.

  George Orwell

  Exercise, Marketing, News

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

  George Orwell

  Future, Past, 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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• If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen.

  George Orwell

  Blow, Doe, Complaining

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.330, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.

  George Orwell

  Country, Struggle, Party

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

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• I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Agents, Firsts

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.148, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

  George Orwell

  Running, War, Intelligent

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.283, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

  George Orwell

  Time, Writing, Political Language

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

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• Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

  George Orwell

  Responsibility, People, Literature

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• The Communism of the English intellectual is something explicable enough. It is the patriotism of the deracinated.

  George Orwell

  Intellectual, Communism, Enough

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.

  George Orwell

  Roots, Long, Evil

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.221, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

  George Orwell

  Birthday, Fifty, Faces

  Notebook, 17 Apr. 1949. These were Orwell's last words in his notebook. He died on 21 Jan. 1950, at the age of forty-six.

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