I.B. George Quotes

With its grace and carelessness, it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though [all] could be swept into a nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.

Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings?

…all the evils of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings.

The problem with communication…is the illusion that is has been accomplished.

Partly it was a sort of hymn to the wisdom and majesty of Big Brother, but still more it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.

What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing you can do with words is to surrender to them.

HIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?MRS HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper - say on a canal barge...

The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Her anger said, as anger is apt to say, that God was with her— that all heaven, though it were crowded with spirits watching them, must be on her side.

Timid people always reek their peevishness on the gentle.

And remember also that in fighting against man we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices.

Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other, to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories

If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit.

The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out: 'Swine! Swine! Swine!', and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen.

But some people, and especially very young people, don’t think anything’s worth believing unless it’s hard to believe.

Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us wordy evidence of the fact.

Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's

England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.

I have not betrayed Julia.

90% of all failures in life are those who have the habit of making excuses.

It is just that I don’t know how I could live without the hope of her. It would be like learning to live with wooden legs.

And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government.

The secret of our emotions never lies in the bare object, but in its subtle relations to our own past.

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.

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

There is a humility about genuine love that is rather horrible in some ways.

Modesty, not temper.

Some people see the glass half full. Others see it half empty.I see a glass that's twice as big as it needs to be.

A fat man eating quails while children are begging for bread is a disgusting sight, but you are less likely to see it when you are within the sound of the guns.

It struck him that the true characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.

Heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation

Youth is wasted on the young.

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy

a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

One’s self-satisfaction is an untaxed kind of property which it is very unpleasant to find deprecated.

It is the favourite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own.

The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses.

Those who have committed no faults want no pardon. We are only defending what we deem our indisputable rights.

We are not interested in those stupid crimes you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.

The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine-gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use.

Ninety-nine percent of all failures come from people who have a habit of making excuses.

If we had lost our own chief good, other people’s good would remain, and that is worth trying for.

But I hasten to finish my story. Brevity is justified at once to those who readily understand, and to those who will never understand.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

[..] the great modern commandment - the eleventh commandment which has wiped out all the others: 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.