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George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

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Famous George Orwell Quotes

“In any form of art designed to appeal to large numbers of people,...[t]he rich man is usually 'bad', and his machinations are invariably frustrated.:; 'Good poor man defeats bad rich man' is an accepted formula.”

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Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945
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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.”

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Author:George Orwell
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“Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.”

ThinkingMenTryingWould BeWantedMovingCertainHumanityCoursesLinesPerfectImagineProduceHe ManPerfectionStrategyCreatorValuableEndlessEmptinessTemporaryProphecyUtopiaContinuationToothachePerfect Society
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another.”

MenWorldWantHumansHeartWarUsePoliticalOrderHuman BeingsSecretStruggleAirPrisonCivil WarParadiseLove One AnotherHeart BreakingPolitical StruggleGestapoSwindling
Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

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Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“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?”

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Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war *is* glorious after all.”

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Book:Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
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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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“The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim-for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.”

MenLife IsThreeToo MuchGroupsMiddleEqualLowsConsciousAimCharacteristicsDistinctionDaily LifeCrushedAbidingAbolishDrudgeryIgnorance In 1984
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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“When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy,the conventional figure of a sahib.For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives",and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.”

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Author:George Orwell
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“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.”

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Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“No one I met at this time -- doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients -- failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.”

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Book:Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London
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“Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.”

MenStillsAgePoliticalPoliticsDangerousBecomingWorshipGunMachinesUniversalVariousGood ManDisguiseLackingBullyTriggersHeresyTruismSqueezingMachine Guns
Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940
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“You must have seen great changes since you were a young man," said Winston tentatively. The old man's pale blue eyes moved from the darts board to the bar, and from the bar to the door of the Gents ... "The beer was better," he said finally. "And cheaper! When I was a young man, mild beer - wallop we used to call it - was fourpence a pint. That was before the war, of course." "Which war was that?" said Winston. "It's all wars," said the old man vaguely. He took up his glass, and his shoulders straightened again. "'Ere's wishing you the very best of 'ealth!”

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Author:George Orwell
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