Quotessence
Home / Authors / George Orwell
George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

Novelist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsWarPeopleHumansWritingMenThinkingPoliticalWorldPolitics1984LiteratureFactsHuman BeingsGeorge OrwellLongPastBookDoeLying

Famous George Orwell Quotes

“The organized lying practiced by totalitarian states is not, as is sometimes claimed, a temporary expedient of the same nature as military deception. It is something integral to totalitarianism, something that would still continue even if concentration camps and secret police forces had ceased to be necessary. Among intelligent Communists there is an underground legend to the effect that although the Russian government is obliged now to deal in lying propaganda, frame-up trials, and so forth, it is secretly recording the true facts and will publish them at some future time. We can, I believe, be quite certain that this is not the case, because the mentality implied by such an action is that of a liberal historian who believes that the past cannot be altered and that a correct knowledge of history is valuable as a matter of course. From the totalitarian point of view history is something to be created rather than learned. 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. Then again, every major change in policy demands a corresponding change of doctrine and a revelation of prominent historical figures. This kind of thing happens everywhere, but is clearly likelier to lead to outright falsification in societies where only one opinion is permissible at any given moment. Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie. It is pointed out that all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one’s senses is simply vulgar philistinism. A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist.”

TruthLyingPoliticsHistoryPsychologyCommunismPropagandaTotalitarianismSoviet Russia
Book:The Prevention of Literature
Create image

“Some people have a knack, for example, of being able to tell when someone's lying to them. They may not know what the truth is, but they can tell when someone is trying to lead them astray or sell them something shady. I think he had that ability to an amazing degree. I also think he thought, without saying it explicitly, that you can convince a crowd of something that's not true more easily than you can one person at a time.”

PeopleThinkingKnowsTryingMayPersonsBookAbleLyingLanguageAbilityExampleTruth IsDegreesSellsCrowdsConvinceKnackShady
Author:George Orwell
Create image

“Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

GivingWarTruthPoliticalLyingPoliticsLanguagePeaceSoundWindPoliticianPureMurderWittyAppearanceThriveTruthfulPolitical PartiesRespectableMaking PeacePeace And JusticePeace JusticeBeing TruthfulMake Peace Not WarCitizenryPolitical WillSolidityKnowledge And PowerPoliticians And PoliticsLanguage WordsPolitical LanguageAnti PoliticalBest PoliticalFalse Appearances
Author:George Orwell
Create image

“He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?”

MenHas BeensFeelingsPastLyingSoundTalkingListeningBedNormalSummerClothesOrdinaryGet UpPeacefulEveningMaking LoveCompulsionSummer Evening
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
Create image

“It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWellsHeartPoliticalLyingPoliticsExistenceMillionsSkyWallOne DayHatredIgnorantCuriousMusclesBelly
Book:Nineteen Eighty-Four
Create image

“If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.”

IfsWorldMayHas BeensSelfHandsMightWould BeLyingSidesBrokenDependsCreaturesHatredContactBombsDeceitRighteousnessEgyptFrontiersForeignersMoraleSelf RighteousnessJavaPersia
Author:George Orwell
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image

“For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.”

MenFeelsHomeHappensLyingFateInfluenceEventsAcceptanceMastersElementsMajorsOrdinaryDown AndTradeUnionsCirclesThings HappenLocalsPassiveHelplessOrdinary ManTrade UnionsHome LifeMaster Ceremony
Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
Create image

“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulne­ss while telling carefully constructe­d lies, to hold simultaneo­usly two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradict­ory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.”

KnowsBelieveTwoUseLyingPartyOpinionKnowingDemocracyImpossibleHonestyMoralityIntegrityConsciousLogicClaimsCitizenshipGuardian
Book:Animal Farm and 1984
Create image

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”

WritingPoliticalLyingLanguageSoundSpeechMurderDefenseOur TimeTruthfulSheerRespectableBeggingCloudyEuphemismVaguenessPolitical SpeechesPolitical LanguageSpeech And Writing
Author:George Orwell
Create image

“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
Create image