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George Orwell

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Famous George Orwell Quotes

“... ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance... A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak.”

PeopleGivingLongAgeStrongDifficultChanceSimpleAnswersCommonWeaponsWeakStrongerComplexesExpensiveDominantDespotismClaws
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950
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“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.”

LongDoeMatterFactsRunningAgePastLostForceExistenceClassPromiseSucceedDemandFunctionStructureObjectivesFraudArtificialStableLong RunsPersistRulingTotalitarianismDisbeliefClingingSchizophreniaAlterationsObjective Truth
Author:George Orwell
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“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

ThinkingMenTryingWould BeWantedMovingCertainHumanityCoursesLinesPerfectImagineProduceHe ManPerfectionStrategyCreatorValuableEndlessEmptinessTemporaryProphecyUtopiaContinuationToothachePerfect Society
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“While the game of deadlocks and bottle-necks goes on, another more serious game is also being played. It is governed by two axioms. One is that there can be no peace without a general surrender of sovereignty: the other is that no country capable of defending its sovereignty ever surrenders it. If one keeps these axioms in mind one can generally see the relevant facts in international affairs through the smoke-screen with which the newspapers surround them.”

IfsMindTwoCountryFactsGamesSeriousGoes OnCapableAffairInternationalScreensNewspapersSurrenderSmokeNecksBottlesSurroundRelevantSovereigntyAxiomsBeing PlayedInternational Affairs
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950
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“When you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don't mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met and spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to feel any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel I ought to - like the Labour M.P.s who get patted on the back by dukes and are lost forever more.”

KnowsFeelsHumansIdeasReasonAbleCertainLostRealizingHuman BeingsForeverOughtMetsIntellectualRelationFleshCirclesLabourBrutalityHuman RelationsDukesCaricatures
Author:George Orwell
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“The clock struck half past two. In the little office at the back of Mr. McKechnie's bookshop, Gordon--Gordon Comstock, last member of the Comstock family, aged twenty-nine and rather moth-eaten already--lounged across the table, pushing a fourpenny packet of Player's Weights open and shut with his thumb.”

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Book:The complete works of George Orwell
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“As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings.”

Life IsFoodRegardCookingRefuseOilTeaCulinaryDisgustingDishesSampleOlivesPuddingGarlicOlive Oil
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945
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“And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned ... -- imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”

PeopleLongWarWholeUseCommonPracticeSlavePopulationTrialsTortureEnlightenedProgressivePrisonerAbandonedConfessionExecutionOutlookImprisonmentHostageDeportationIgnorance In 1984
Book:1984
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“From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.”

ShouldWritingBookIdeasAgeConsciousnessFiveFourGrewSixGrew UpShould HaveTwentiesDown AndSettlingAbandonSooner Or LaterTrue NatureSeventeenSettling Down
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary change without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere,it would be possible to abolish poverty without destroying liberty.”

IfsWould BeLibertyPovertyCapableEnglandRevolutionaryDestroyingAbolishBloodshedRevolutionary Change
Book:The English People: With 8 Plates in Colour and 17 Illus. in Black and White
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“The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.”

StillsEndsProcessPositionMoonHundredBlowRevolutionaryCrashEchoesMarxismUnderminingDynamiteMoralistSappers
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

WorldShouldKindArtBookIdeasPoliticalDesireCertainAttitudeOpinionShould HaveStriveBias
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940
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“you can't live life without consequences. They occur regardless of the decision. A consequence is an outcome, good or bad. You can live life without regrets and thats what makes it worth it. Or you could live with regret and end up hanging yourself but thats still good. You paid for the rope so your feeding someones family. Something to be proud of before you kick the bucket”

LifeStillsEndsDecisionRegretProudConsequencePaidLive LifeOutcomesKicksWorth ItBe ProudFeedingRopeBuckets
Author:George Orwell
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“All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy. They have internationalist aims, and at the same time they struggle to keep up a standard of life with which those aims are incompatible. We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are 'enlightened' all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our 'enlightenment,' demands that the robbery shall continue.”

CountryFightingLeftWishPartyStruggleOughtDemandStandardsEnlightenmentAimWingsBottomEnlightenedLive ByConsumerismOverconsumptionStandards Of LivingLeft WingRobberyRobbing
Book:The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage
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“But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.”

WaySelfProblemPoliticalFallPoliticsStrongLosesFourGroupsMiddleMassDeeperSelf ConfidenceWillingnessRulingRevoltNineteenPerpetuatingIgnorance In 1984
Book:The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four
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“Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers.”

IfsThinkingFirstsPoliticalFightingStepsWrittenTroubleModernWillingHabitConcernSpreadFirst StepsImitationExclusiveAvoidedBad HabitsFrivolousRegenerationScholarlyModern English
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you're happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?”

IfsWantGivingFeelsShouldYearsTwoBigsHateThreeEnergySexGonePlansMinutesLove YouBrotherBearsDown AndExcitedDamnCheerThree YearsFlagsBloodyMaking LoveUp And DownSourBurstingDon't Give A Damn
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.”

MindHumansPastMemoriesPartyRecordsWrittenEventsMembersAgreeObjectivesPast EventsMutabilityIgnorance In 19841984 ImportantAgree Upon
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.”

PeopleThinkingIdeasMomentsBodyGivenAcceptingOrthodoxyFreedom Of The Press
Book:Orwell and politics: Animal farm in the context of essays, reviews and letters selected from the complete works of George Orwell
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