George Orwell Quotes

Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats.

He had moved from thought to words, and now from words to actions.

The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.

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.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

The end was contained in the beginning.

Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.

You were the dead; theirs was the future.

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?

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

A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war.

I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.

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?

the mute protest in your own bones

The fight against bad English is not frivolous.

Is not anyone with any degree of mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?

The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.

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

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable

Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.

What happens to you here is forever.

There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.

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

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

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

The object of powder is powder.

I had been in London innumerable times, and yet till that day I had never noticed one of the worst things about London-the fact that it costs money even to sit down.

You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.

Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

By revolution we become more ourselves, not less.

Between pigs and human beings there was not and there need not be any clash of interest whatsoever.

How right the working classes are in their "materialism." How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time!

[T]he outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality.:; Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?

Four legs gooood, two legs baaad!

Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.

One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.

Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person.

The human beings did not hate Animal Farm any less now that it was prospering; indeed, they hated it more than ever.

Why should be fruit be held inferior to the flower?

I have no wish to take life, not even human life

Happiness can only exist in acceptance.

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.

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.

What is not hereditary cannot be permanent.

One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death.

It was soon noticed that when ever there was work to be done the cat could never be found.