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George Orwell

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“Old Porteous’s mind, I thought, probably stopped working at about the time of the Russo-Japanese war. And it’s a ghastly thing that nearly all the decent people, the people who don’t want to go round smashing faces in with spanners, are like that. They’re decent, but their minds have stopped. They can’t defend themselves against what’s coming to them, because they can’t see it, even when it’s under their noses.”

Close MindednessDecent People
Book:Coming Up for Air
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“Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news — things which on their own merits would get the big headlines-being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. 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. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.”

PropagandaFreedom Of The PressManufacturing Consent
Book:Animal Farm
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“Si que­da­ba al­gu­na es­pe­ran­za, debía estar en los pro­les, por­que solo en esas masas des­pre­cia­das, que cons­ti­tuían el ochen­ta y cinco por cien­to de la po­bla­ción de Ocea­nía, podía ge­ne­rar­se la fuer­za ne­ce­sa­ria para des­truir al Par­ti­do. Este no podía de­rro­car­se desde den­tro. Sus enemi­gos, si es que los había, no te­nían forma de unir­se o si­quie­ra de re­co­no­cer­se mu­tua­men­te. In­clu­so en caso de que exis­tie­ra la le­gen­da­ria Her­man­dad —lo cual no era del todo im­po­si­ble— re­sul­ta­ba in­con­ce­bi­ble que sus miem­bros pu­die­ran re­unir­se en gru­pos de más de dos o tres. La re­be­lión se li­mi­ta­ba a un cruce de mi­ra­das, una in­fle­xión de la voz o, como mucho, una pa­la­bra su­su­rra­da oca­sio­nal­men­te. En cam­bio los pro­les, si pu­die­ran ser cons­cien­tes de su fuer­za, no ten­drían ne­ce­si­dad de cons­pi­rar. Bas­ta­ría con que se en­ca­bri­ta­ran como un ca­ba­llo que se sa­cu­de las mos­cas. Si qui­sie­ran, po­drían volar el Par­ti­do en pe­da­zos a la ma­ña­na si­guien­te. Tarde o tem­prano tenía que ocu­rrír­se­les. Y sin em­bar­go…”

EspañolSpanishGeorge Orwell1984OrwellWinston Smith
Book:1984
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“La Lo­te­ría, con su re­par­to se­ma­nal de enor­mes pre­mios, era el único acon­te­ci­mien­to pú­bli­co al que los pro­les pres­ta­ban ver­da­de­ra aten­ción. Era pro­ba­ble que hu­bie­se mi­llo­nes de pro­les para quie­nes la Lo­te­ría fuese la razón prin­ci­pal, si no la única, para se­guir con vida. Era su de­lei­te, su lo­cu­ra, su anal­gé­si­co, su es­ti­mu­lan­te in­te­lec­tual. En lo que se re­fe­ría a la Lo­te­ría, hasta quie­nes ape­nas sa­bían leer y es­cri­bir eran ca­pa­ces de lle­var a cabo in­trin­ca­dos cálcu­los y sor­pren­den­tes lo­gros me­mo­rís­ti­cos. Había toda una tribu de in­di­vi­duos que se ga­na­ban la vida ven­dien­do sis­te­mas, pre­dic­cio­nes y amu­le­tos de la suer­te. Wins­ton no tenía nada que ver con la Lo­te­ría, que se ges­tio­na­ba desde el Mi­nis­te­rio de la Abun­dan­cia, pero sabía (como cual­quier otro miem­bro del Par­ti­do) que los pre­mios eran casi todos ima­gi­na­rios. Solo se pa­ga­ban pe­que­ñas sumas y los ga­na­do­res de los pre­mios gor­dos en reali­dad no exis­tían. En au­sen­cia de ver­da­de­ra co­mu­ni­ca­ción entre una parte de Ocea­nía y otra, no re­sul­ta­ba di­fí­cil ama­ñar­lo.”

EspañolSpanishGeorge OrwellOrwellWinston SmithLotería
Book:1984
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“En cierto sentido, la visión del mundo que tenía el Partido se imponía con éxito a gente incapaz de entenderla. Se les podía convencer de que aceptaran las más flagrantes violaciones de la realidad, porque nunca llegaban a entender del todo la enormidad de lo que se les pedía, y no estaban lo bastante interesados en los acontecimientos públicos para reparar en lo que ocurría. Su falta de comprensión les permitía conservar la cordura. Se limitaban a tragárselo todo y nunca se les indigestaba porque lo que tragaban no dejaba ningún residuo, igual que un grano de trigo puede pasar por el cuerpo de un pájaro sin ser digerido.”

EspañolSpanishGeorge Orwell1984OrwellWinston Smith
Book:1984
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“The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralised government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal.”

PoliticsHierarchy Among People
Book:1984
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“It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of the was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.”

George Orwell1984Page 72Page 71
Book:1984
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“All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”

WritingLiteratureBooksWriting Craft
Book:Why I Write
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“Yirmi yıllık duraklama ve işsizliğin ardından, bütün İngiliz sosyalist hareketi, halk kitlelerinin arzulanabilir bulacağı bir sosyalizm versiyonu üretmekten bile acizdi. İşçi partisi ürkek bir reformizmi savunuyordu, Marksistler modern dünyaya on dokuzuncu yüzyıldan kalma gözlükleriyle bakıyorlardı. Her ikisi de, tarımı ve emperyal sorunları görmezden geliyor ve orta sınıfları karşılarına alıyordu. Sol propagandanın boğucu aptallığı, fabrika müdürlerinden pilotlara, donanma subaylarından çiftçilere, beyaz yakalılardan esnaflara ve polislere, gerekli olan insanlardan oluşan sınıfları bütünüyle korkutup kaçırmıştı. Bütün bu insanlara sosyalizmi rızklarını tehdit eden ya da kışkırtıcı, yabancı, onların vereceği isimle "Britanya karşıtı" bir şey olarak görmeleri öğretilmişti. Yalnızca orta sınıfın en yararsız kesimi olan entelektüeller harekete yöneldiler.”

PropagandaÇEviriLevent KoncaNeden YazıyorumİNgiltereSosyalizmBritanyaOrta Sınıf
Book:Why I Write
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“As he looked at the woman in her characteristic attitude, her thick arms reaching up for the line, her powerful marelike buttocks protruded, it struck him for the first time that she was beautiful. It had never before occurred to him that the body of a woman of fifty, blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing, then hardened, roughened by work till it was coarse in the grain like an overriped turnip, could be beautiful. But it was so, and after all, he thought, why not? The solid, contourless body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?”

George Orwell1984Page 219
Book:1984
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“All the while they were talking the half-remembered rhyme kept running through Winston’s head. Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s, You owe me three farthings, say the bells of St. Martin’s! It was curious, but when you said it to yourself you had the illusion of actually hearing bells, the bells of a lost London that still existed somewhere or other, disguised and forgotten. From one ghostly steeple after another he seemed to hear them pealing forth. Yet so far as he could remember he had never in real life heard church bells ringing.”

BellsRhymeRingingOranges And Lemons
Book:1984
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“It was easy to laugh at Fascism when we imagined that it was based on hysterical nationalism, because it seemed obvious that the Fascist states, each regarding itself as the chosen people and patriotic contra mundum, would clash with one another. But nothing of the kind is happening. Fascism is now an international movement, which means not only that the Fascist nations can combine for purposes of loot, but that they are groping, perhaps only half consciously as yet, towards a world-system. For the vision of the totalitarian state there is being substituted the vision of the totalitarian world.”

FascismTotalitarianismWorld Order
Book:The Road to Wigan Pier
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“Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”

TotalitarianismDoublethinkNewspeakBlackwhite
Book:1984
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“This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that ‘they’ would never allow it. Who were ‘they’? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently ‘they’ were omnipotent.”

HopsLabourWorking ClassTrade UnionsServilityWage Labour
Book:The Road to Wigan Pier
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“The "herrenvolk" [master race] are all around you, threading their way on their bicycles between the piles of rubble or rushing off with jugs and buckets to meet the water cart. It is queer to think that these are the people who once ruled Europe, from the Channel to the Caspian Sea and might have conquered our own island, if they had known how weak we were.”

World War IiNazi GermanyWar Correspondent1945
Book:Orwell: The Observer Years
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“He could not help feeling a twinge of panic. It was absurd, since the writing of those particular words was not more dangerous than the initial act of opening the diary, but for a moment he was tempted to tear out the spoiled pages and abandon the enterprise altogether. He did not do so, however, because he knew that it was useless. Whether he wrote DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER, or whether he refrained from writing it, made no difference. Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police would get him just the same. He had committed — would still have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper — the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. 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.”

DifferenceThoughtcrime
Book:1984
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“All the brass instruments and big drums in the world cannot turn ‘God Save the King’ into a good tune, but on the very rare occasions when it is sung in full it does spring to life in the two lines: Confound their politics, Frustrate their knavish tricks! And, in fact, I had always imagined that the second verse is habitually left out because of a vague suspicion on the part of the Tories that these lines refer to themselves.”

PoliticsAnthemTories
Author:George Orwell
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“There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when “our” side commits it. Even if one does not deny that the crime has happened, even if one knows that it is exactly the same crime as one has condemned in some other case, even if one admits in an intellectual sense that it is unjustified—still one cannot feel that it is wrong. Loyalty is involved, and so pity ceases to function. … The nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him.”

IntellectualWarnings About Society
Book:Essays
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