George Orwell

Quotes

• “When one thinks of the cruelty, squalor, and futility of war - and in this particular case of the intrigues, the persecu...”
• “Gordon put his hand against the swing door. He even pushed it open a few inches. The warm fog of smoke and beer slipped ...”
• “You cannot be objective about an aerial torpedo. And the horror we feel of these things has led to this conclusion: if s...”
• “And so the game continues. The logical end is a régime in which every opposition party and newspaper is suppressed and e...”
• “England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old...”
• “The thing that strikes me more and more-and it strikes a lot of other people, too-is the extraordinary viciousness and d...”
• “While the game of deadlocks and bottle-necks goes on, another more serious game is also being played. It is governed by ...”
• “Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off th...”
• “Writing is also a profession, and, at its best, an honourable one. It has been made honourable by those who have already...”
• “The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whet...”
• “Of all types of human being, only the artist takes it upon himself to say that he 'cannot' work. But it is quite true; t...”
• “There was something about him, the proud man apart, the Don Quixote on a bicycle (and if Saint Thomas More was the first...”
• “It will be seen that, as used, the word 'Fascism' is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used...”
• “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word whe...”
• “The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things ...”
• “Money, once again; all is money. All human relationships must be purchased with money. If you have no money, men won't c...”
• “Even as it stands, the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states ...”
• “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that com...”
• “Later, as power slipped from the hands of the Anarchists into the hands of the Communists and right-wing Socialists, the...”
• “The peculiarity of the totalitarian state is that though it controls thought, it does not fix it. It sets up unquestiona...”
• “I am trying to describe the people in our quarter, not for the mere curiosity, but because they are all part of the stor...”
• “It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began...”
• “I only realized during my last week that I was being cheated, and, as I could prove nothing, only twenty-five francs wer...”
• “By one of those strokes of luck that happen about once in a year I had managed to drop the bomb almost exactly where the...”
• “You and I both know that there can be no real solution of the Indian problem which does not also benefit Britain. Either...”
• “It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets...”
• “Civilisation rests ultimately on coercion. What holds society together is not the policeman but the goodwill of common m...”
• “Between them these two books sum up our present predicament.  Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for mar...”
• “The workers' militias, based on the trade unions and each composed of people of approximately the same political opinion...”
• “Of course, fanatical Communists and Russophiles generally can be respected, even if they are mistaken.  But for peo...”
• “That devastating omniscience! That noxious, horn-spectacled refinement! And the money that such refinement means! For af...”
• “The middle-class families celebrated by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow families whose sons officered the army and navy an...”
• “Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are founded on real differences of outlook. Till recen...”
• “The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally prove...”
• “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sa...”
• “Marriage is only a trap set for you by the money-god. You grab the bait; snap goes the trap; and there you are, chained ...”
• “Certainly we ought to be discontented, we ought not simply to find out ways of making the best of a bad job, and yet if ...”
• “In addition to this there is the horrible - the really disquieting - prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gather...”
• “Scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more phy...”
• “Of late years it has been the fashion to talk about Gandhi as though he were not only sympathetic to the Western Left-wi...”
• “The Spanish war and other events in 1936-37 turned the scale and thereafter I knew where I stood. Every line of serious ...”
• “Mr Noyes remarks at the beginning of his book that one cannot cast out devils with the aid of Beelzebub, but he is also ...”
• “First of all, a message to English left-wing journalists and intellectuals generally: Do remember that dishonesty and co...”
• “Secondly there is the fact that the intellectuals are more totalitarian in outlook than the common people. On the whole ...”
• “In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Ru...”
• “In Burma and Paris and London and on the road to Wigan pier, and in Spain, being shot at, and eventually wounded, by fas...”
• “The state will cease to govern and will survive merely as an agency for the distribution of necessary commodities. All d...”
• “We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. ...”
• “For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom a...”
• “For the dreadful thing about the kind of brutalities here described, is that they are quite unavoidable. When a subject ...”