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George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

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Famous George Orwell Quotes

“England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing to attention during God save the King than of stealing from a poor box.”

FeelsCountryFactsLeftFeltPoorAttentionStrangeDutyKingsIntellectualStandingHorseEnglandInstitutionsWingsBoxesCirclesStealingAshamedRacingNationalityEnglishmenLeft WingGreat CountryPuddingDisgracefulHorse Racing
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

MenFactsHelpingFightingClassMiddleHe ManTradeUnionsIncomeIdeologyDevelopingPostsOfficialsAppropriateMiddle ClassLabourBourgeoisBourgeoisieWorking ManTrade Unions
Author:George Orwell
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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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“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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“In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.”

PeopleThinkingNeedsIdeasCountryMomentsFactsBodyFacesGivenDarkAcceptingEnemyWorstIntellectualJournalistOfficialsCowardiceOrthodoxyBansWorst Enemy
Author:George Orwell
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“For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.”

MeanFactsCertainPovertyWorryLimitsDiscoveryHungerFeaturesBoredomComplicationRedeeming
Book:Down and Out in Paris and London
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“If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves.”

IfsDoeCountryFactsSeemsFacesCertainOpinionEnemyWorstIntellectualDeserveJournalistDiscussionPrintFrightenedEditorsCowardiceTopicsPublishersPublic OpinionWorst EnemyProsecution
Book:Animal farm: a fairy story
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“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

PeopleThinkingWayYearsHas BeensFactsPastPoliticalPoliticsWishFutureObviousThriveIgnoredYour FutureMy FutureUnwelcomeForeseeingPolitical ThinkingYears Past
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”

IfsHumansHeartSaidMatterDoneFactsFeelingsWantedDifferencesAliveObjectsLaysRateDetailsMysteriousTortureInquiryStaying Alive
Author:George Orwell
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“The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.”

ThinkingMenDoeBookFactsHouseDifferencesPoorLibertyRichShapesMassSmartMachinesInjusticeEnormousSettingEducatedSettingsBoredomHotelRich And PoorRich ManSweepingHordeTreadmillsEducated Man
Book:Down and Out in Paris and London
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“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

WantWritingArtBookFactsLyingAttentionProduceDrawsConcernHearingWorks Of ArtInitialsWriters And WritingFamous WritersArt Of WritingWriting From Famous Authors
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“The existence of good bad literature—the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously—is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration.”

ArtBookFactsLiteratureExistenceArt IsMovedRefuseExcitedIntellectRemindersAmused
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950
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“There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of permanence.”

SoulFactsTogetherLastsPleasureFiveMinutesBedIllusionSafetyLaysSensualityClockFive MinutesGraspingPermanenceDamned SoulsImpending Death
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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“I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.”

ThinkingWorldChildrenPersonsFactsStoriesFeelingsFeltMy OwnHabitConversationAmbitionLonelyEverydayIsolatedImaginaryEveryday LifeFacilityMaking UpUndervaluedLonely Child
Book:A Collection of Essays
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“But what is work and what is not work? Is it work to dig, to carpenter, to plant trees, to fell trees, to ride, to fish, to hunt, to feed chickens, to play the piano, to take photographs, to build a house, to cook, to sew, to trim hats, to mend motor bicycles? All of these things are work to somebody, and all of them are play to somebody. There are in fact very few activities which cannot be classed either as work or play according as you choose to regard them.”

PlayFactsHappinessHouseWorkTreeActivityRegardPlantPhotographFishesCooksPianoHatsChickensYou ChooseHuntsMotorBicycleCarpenterPlant A Tree
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: The road to Wigan Pier
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“The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.”

BelieveLongFactsFeelingsRealityTruthLyingProcessForgetExistenceMediaNeededMassDrawsConsciousAccountsGuiltDenyTyrannyObjectivesDeceptionSufficientUnconsciousTyrantsOblivionDeliberatePrecisionInconvenientMass MediaFalsityObjective RealityMedia ControlIgnorance In 1984
Author:George Orwell
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“The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.”

KindWarFactsSufferingIndividualLibertyMilitaryMonthsPressesProgressiveAntiwarTruthfulEfficiencyDegradationCompatibleIndividual Liberty
Book:Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
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“The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

KnowsBelieveFactsShowsRealityFaithBeliefProcessCapableChecksSooner Or LaterBattlefieldsBumpsUntrue
Author:George Orwell
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“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.”

LongRealFactsAgePoliticalLyingSufferingTurnsFallLanguageEnemyIssuesClearMassHatredAimDetailsSnowAtmosphereFollyLatinGapsExhaustedInkCoveringOutlinesSchizophreniaEvasionIdiomInsincerityPolitical IssuesLong WordsPolitical LanguageBad LanguageCuttlefish
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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“All people who have reached the point of becoming nations tend to despise foreigners, but there is not much doubt that the English-speaking races are the worst offenders. One can see this from the fact that as soon as they become fully aware of any foreign race they invent an insulting nickname for it.”

PeopleFactsPoliticalNationsRaceDoubtWorstBecomingRacismDespiseForeignersInsultingNicknamesOffendersEnglish Speaking
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.”

ThinkingYearsBookMomentsFactsRealityPastStuffSoundHoursChanceHappenedTenYears AgoSightTwentiesSmellCuriousHistory Books
Book:The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell
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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.”

ChildrenFactsViewsWrittenChildhoodRatePoint Of ViewTreatedNovelistsSpiteEnteringDickens
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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