George Orwell Quotes And Sayings

Eric Arthur Blair, who used the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. Orwell wrote literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. He is best known for his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the allegorical novella Animal Farm . Orwell’s work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian – descriptive of totalitarian or authoritarian social practices – has entered the language together with many of his neologisms, including cold war, Big Brother, thought police and thoughtcrime.

Oceania Was At War With Eurasia; Therefore Oceania Had Always Been At War With Eurasia.

Political Language... Is Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable, And To Give An Appearance Of Solidity To Pure Wind.

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

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.

Who Controls The Past Controls The Future. Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered By Self-deception.

I Sometimes Think That The Price Of Liberty Is Not So Much Eternal Vigilance As Eternal Dirt.

Serious Sport Has Nothing To Do With Fair Play. It Is Bound Up With Hatred, Jealousy, Boastfulness, Disregard Of All Rules And Sadistic Pleasure In Witnessing Violence. In Other Words, It Is War Minus The Shooting.

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 Squirting Out Ink.

If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

Big Brother Is Watching You.

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.

Doublethink Means The Power Of Holding Two Contradictory Beliefs In One's Mind Simultaneously, And Accepting Both Of Them.

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.

The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, But He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection.

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic.

Men Can Only Be Happy When They Do Not Assume That The Object Of Life Is Happiness.

Prolonged, Indiscriminate Reviewing Of Books Is A Quite Exceptionally Thankless, Irritating And Exhausting Job. It Not Only Involves Praising Trash But Constantly Inventing Reactions Towards Books About Which One Has No Spontaneous Feeling Whatever.

What Can You Do Against The Lunatic Who Is More Intelligent Than Yourself, Who Gives Your Arguments A Fair Hearing And Then Simply Persists In His Lunacy?

People Sleep Peaceably In Their Beds At Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready To Do Violence On Their Behalf.

Society Has Always To Demand A Little More From Human Beings Than It Will Get In Practice.

The Quickest Way Of Ending A War Is To Lose It.

There Is Hardly Such A Thing As A War In Which It Makes No Difference Who Wins. Nearly Always One Side Stands More Or Less For Progress, The Other Side More Or Less For Reaction.

To An Ordinary Human Being, Love Means Nothing If It Does Not Mean Loving Some People More Than Others.

Every War When It Comes, Or Before It Comes, Is Represented Not As A War But As An Act Of Self-defense Against A Homicidal Maniac.

War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.

War Against A Foreign Country Only Happens When The Moneyed Classes Think They Are Going To Profit From It.

For A Creative Writer Possession Of The 'Truth' Is Less Important Than Emotional Sincerity.

Each Generation Imagines Itself To Be More Intelligent Than The One That Went Before It, And Wiser Than The One That Comes After It.

Freedom Is The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

Myths Which Are Believed In Tend To Become True.

So Much Of Left-wing Thought Is A Kind Of Playing With Fire By People Who Don't Even Know That Fire Is Hot.

I Doubt Whether Classical Education Ever Has Been Or Can Be Successfully Carried Out Without Corporal Punishment.

Dickens Is One Of Those Authors Who Are Well Worth Stealing.

Those Who 'Abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.

As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.

On The Whole, Human Beings Want To Be Good, But Not Too Good, And Not Quite All The Time.

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

No One Can Look Back On His Schooldays And Say With Truth That They Were Altogether Unhappy.

Not To Expose Your True Feelings To An Adult Seems To Be Instinctive From The Age Of Seven Or Eight Onwards.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

We Of The Sinking Middle Class May Sink Without Further Struggles Into The Working Class Where We Belong, And Probably When We Get There It Will Not Be So Dreadful As We Feared, For, After All, We Have Nothing To Lose.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent.

If You Want A Vision Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face - Forever.

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.