George Orwell Quotes

The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.

...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.

There is no such thing as a naval dictatorship.

Imperialism as he [Kipling] sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising.

Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.

After 40, a man is responsible for his face.

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.

The more intelligent, the less sane

Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.

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.

By ' patriotism ' I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life , which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

Surely, comrades, you don't want Jones back?

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.

Power is not a means; it is an end.

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?

We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.

You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

International football is the continuation of war by other means.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.

Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.

In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.

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

I would sooner be a foreigner in Spain than in most countries. How easy it is to make friends in Spain!

We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

[Political] prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY

The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.