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Quote by George Orwell

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George Orwell
George Orwell

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was a British novelist and political critic. Known for his sharp social criticism and profound insights into totalitarianism, Orwell is best remembered for his novels '1984' and 'Animal Farm', which remain influential to this day. more

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“By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.”

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Book:The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946
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“In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.”

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Book:All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays
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“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.”

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Book:A Collection of Essays
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“[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.”

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