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George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

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Famous George Orwell Quotes

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.”

WritingLongBookStruggleWrittenPainfulIllnessHorribleDemonWriting LifeWriting AdviceWriting A BookExhaustingWriters And WritingBook WritingWriter's BlockWriting By WritersReading And WritingCreativity And WritingWriters ReadingWriting And ReadingInspiration To WriteReading WritingWriting WordsWriting ShortEditing And WritingShort Writing
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

MenFeelsMayLanguageFailingEasierDrinkHappeningsUglyFoolishOur ThoughtsEnglish Language
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually spent in doing it. And then calculate the time you've spent on things like shaving, riding to and fro on buses, waiting in railway junctions, swapping dirty stories, and reading the newspapers.”

ThinkingStoriesCareReadingWaitingHoursAddNewspapersDirtyBusRidingFractionsRailwayShavingJunctionSwapping
Book:Coming Up for Air
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“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.”

Has BeensBookPoliticsProcessPartyRecordsStreetsMinutesBuildingEndlessDestroyedContinuingStatuesAltered
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“It was with the last revolution and the coming of INGSOC (Inglish/English Socialism) that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently - by cultivating ignorance among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought Police. Part of this strategy included the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory; they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism.”

WarStatesLastsFightingThreePoliticsClassPositionIgnoranceRevolutionVictoryMajorsThirdsPoliceStrategySocialismGuaranteesPerpetualChaptersWarfareEmergenciesMaintenanceAuthoritarianismCultivatingThought PolicePerpetual War
Author:George Orwell
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“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.”

GivingLooksFacesCasesDangerousExpressionHabitAnxietyTyrannyNervousWanderRangeUnconsciousYour FaceSmallestOffenseSuggestionsTicsMutteringAbnormality
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.”

WorldWayLongImportantCertainFatherViewsGroupsSonEssenceRemainsStructureTyrannyPersistenceTyrantsRulingInheritanceFather SonSuccessorsWorld ViewIgnorance In 1984
Author:George Orwell
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“Scientific education for the masses will do little good, and probably a lot of harm, if it simply boils down to more physics, more chemistry, more biology, etc to the detriment of literature and history. Its probable effect on the average human being would be to narrow the range of his thoughts and make him more than ever contemptuous of such knowledge as he did not possess.”

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Author:George Orwell
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“In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the last ten years, I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.”

IfsYearsHas BeensIdeasCountryWantedLastsBeliefOpinionMovementTenEssentialsDestructionOriginalsCorruptionMythConvincedRussiaSocialismSovietRulersSocialistRevivalOriginal IdeasLeftiesSocialist Countries
Book:It is what I think, 1947-1948
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“The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.”

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Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941
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“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”

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Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so. And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself.”

ThinkingWayWantGivingMeanPersonsSaidSometimesMightHappensCareSufferingFearReadyTricksSavingDamnSave YourselfDon't Give A Damn
Author:George Orwell
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“The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.”

WorldMindBookRealCountryMomentsReadingCasesChildhoodSeriesOddMapsRetreatFabulousBook ReadingRest Of Life
Book:Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays
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“...in the negative part of Professor's Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.”

GivingSaidEnoughPoliticsDealsNegativeDemocraticRateContraryMinoritiesProfessorsCollectivismThesisHayekRoad To Serfdom
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.”

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Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.”

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Book:A Collection of Essays
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