“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”
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Famous George Orwell Quotes
“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.”
Source: A Collection of Essays
“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
Source: Critical Essays
“Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.”
“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Source: Critical Essays
“Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.”
Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.”
“To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.”
“I'm fat, but I'm thin inside... there's a thin man inside every fat man.”
“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
Source: The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946
“For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
Source: The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage
Source: 1984
“Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.”
“As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”
“Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”
Source: Animal Farm and 1984
Source: The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell
“Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”
Source: I have tried to tell the truth: 1943-1944
“The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.”
Source: Coming Up for Air
“Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”
Source: Animal Farm
“When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”
Source: A Collection of Essays
“Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”
Source: A Collection of Essays
Source: Animal Farm and 1984
“Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.”
Source: The complete works of George Orwell
Source: A Collection of Essays
Source: Animal Farm and 1984
Source: Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
Source: All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Source: A Collection of Essays