George Orwell Quotes

Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated.

Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart in you?

The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.

It [England] is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.

I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

The organizing principal for any culture is War.

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

[You write out of the] desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death, etc., etc., etc. It is humbug to pretend this is not a motive and a strong one.

And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think, as I thought then, that it is better to die violently and not too old.

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?

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

Good novel are written by people who are not frightened.

If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.

But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him the horror was that he might also be wrong.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.

There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.

A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.

In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last

Hitherto, the rights and wrongs had seemed so beautifully simple.

When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.

To die hating them, that was freedom

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues....

He is fiddling while Rome is burning, and, unlike the enormous majority of people who do this, fiddling with his face toward the flames.

and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth

That is her style of beauty.

She's beautiful, ' he murmured.'She's a metre across the hips, easily, ' said Julia.'That is her style of beauty, ' said Winston.

Poverty is spiritual halitosis.

If all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.

Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.

In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and the foreknowledge of pain.

Money, money, all is money! Could you write even a penny novelette without money to put heart into you? Invention, energy, wit, style, charm--they've all got to be paid for in hard cash.

For money buys all virtues. Money suffereth long and is kid, is not puffed up, doth not behave unseemly, seeketh not her own

At the time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish.

Remember that the bad days are not forever, and the trouble which seems so terrible at last.

I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.

Outside, even through the shut window-pane, the world looked cold.

Nothing exists except through human consciousness

The outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality. Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?

People worship power in the form in which they are able to understand it.

It is only when you meet someoneof a different culture from yourself that you begin to realize what your ownbeliefs really are.

It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realize what your own beliefs really are.

Truth is a matter of PerspectiveThere will be my truth and your truth and as Universal truth doesn't exist.

Sooner
 or 
later 
it 
would 
happen: 
strength 
would 
change
 into 
consciousness.