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George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

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Famous George Orwell Quotes

“It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to reveal everything that he knows: and in a profession in which one is a baby at 50 and middle-aged at seventy-five, it is natural that anyone who has not actually been disgraced should feel that he still has a future.”

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Book:The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell
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“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

PeopleWritingFacesPoliticalLanguagePartySpeechArgumentIndiaAimBritishDefenseOur TimeBombsJapanSquaresAtomsBrutalSheerPolitical PartiesDroppingBeggingCloudyEuphemismAtom BombDeportationContinuanceVaguenessPolitical SpeechesPolitical LanguageBritish RuleSpeech And WritingBritish Rule In India
Book:Orwell and Politics
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“Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

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Book:The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940
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“But the problems of perpetuating a hierarchical society go deeper than this. There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern.”

WaySelfProblemPoliticalFallPoliticsStrongLosesFourGroupsMiddleMassDeeperSelf ConfidenceWillingnessRulingRevoltNineteenPerpetuatingIgnorance 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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“Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional [or scholarly] writers.”

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Book:A Collection of Essays
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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.”

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Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“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
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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.”

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Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944
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“It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.”

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Book:The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell
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“Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.”

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Book:Animal Farm and 1984
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“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.”

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Book:Nineteen Eighty-Four
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“Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.”

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Book:The complete works of George Orwell
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“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
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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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“Winston worked in the RECORDS DEPARTMENT (a single branch of the Ministry of Truth) editing and writing for The Times. He dictated into a machine called a Speakwrite. Winston would receive articles or news-items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, in Newspeak, rectify. If, for example, the Ministry of Plenty forecast a surplus, and in reality the result was grossly less, Winston's job was to change previous versions so the old version would agree with the new one.”

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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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“To say "I accept" in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder.”

AgeFilmPoliticalFreedomSecretAcceptingGunHollywoodMachinesMurderPressesPrisonBombsGasMaskConcentrationCampsCensorshipSpyBeltsSlogansAeroplanesRubberConcentration CampSubmarinesAspirinMachine GunsHollywood FilmsGas Masks
Book:A Collection of Essays
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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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