George Orwell Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

  George Orwell

  Atheist, Catholic, Religion

  32 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

• To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

  George Orwell

  Country, Doe, Totalitarianism

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

  17 Copy quote

• The object of power is power.

  George Orwell

  Power, Objects

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 3, ch. 3 (1949)

  16 Copy quote

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

  George Orwell

  Cutting, Thinking, Passive Voice

  George Orwell (1953). “Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays”

  27 Copy quote

• The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as 'Sir'

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Land, House

  George Orwell (2004). “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.83, Penguin UK

  31 Copy quote

• 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

  11 Copy quote

• 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

  9 Copy quote

• I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Wish, Doe

  George Orwell (1997). “The complete works of George Orwell”

  16 Copy quote

• No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

  George Orwell

  Believe, Animal, Decision

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

  64 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

• You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

  George Orwell

  Empty, Hollow

  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.1351, Penguin UK

  11 Copy quote

• And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Party, Past

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 1, ch. 3 (1949) See Orwell 19

  23 Copy quote

• The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Tired, Stories

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”

  27 Copy quote

• In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

  George Orwell

  Country, Dark, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.

  George Orwell

  Men, May, Failing

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

  6 Copy quote

• Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

  George Orwell

  War, Lying, Drug

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.31, Arcturus Publishing

  10 Copy quote

• Power is not a means; it is an end.

  George Orwell

  Mean, Ends

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 3, ch. 3 (1949)

  11 Copy quote

• For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

  George Orwell

  Running, Ignorance, Thinking

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  39 Copy quote

• Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Window Panes, Should

  57 Copy quote

• Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Fascists, Pacifism

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

  27 Copy quote

• Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Political, Belief

  George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “I have tried to tell the truth: 1943-1944”

  83 Copy quote

• Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

  George Orwell

  Dry Up, Creative, Freedom Of Speech

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

  16 Copy quote

• The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad.

  George Orwell

  War, Home, Scotland

  19 Copy quote

• We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

  George Orwell

  War, Dirty, Fighting

  "Looking Back on the Spanish War". Book by George Orwell, § 1, 1943.

  27 Copy quote

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