George Orwell Quotes - Page 6

Quotes about:

• Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Freedom, Knowledge

  48 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'

  23 Copy quote

• 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

• 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.

  13 Copy quote

• Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.

  George Orwell

  Ukraine, People, Majority

  George Orwell (2005). “In defence of English cooking”, Penguin Hardcover

  56 Copy quote

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

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Crazy, Believe

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  64 Copy quote

• 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

  42 Copy quote

• A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

  George Orwell

  Hypocrite, Insult, Humanitarian

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

• 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.

  8 Copy quote

• [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”

  20 Copy quote

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

  George Orwell

  Dirty, Fighting, Survival

  26 Copy quote

• 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”

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  8 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  10 Copy quote

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

  George Orwell

  Responsibility, People, Literature

  10 Copy quote

• 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”

  18 Copy quote

• One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Men, Ordinary

  "Notes on Nationalism" (1945)

  16 Copy quote

• But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Life, Political Language

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

  72 Copy quote

• What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.

  George Orwell

  Stupidity, Instinct, Cowardice

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.272, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  19 Copy quote

• One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

  George Orwell

  Atheist, Catholic, Religion

  32 Copy quote

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