Home » Browse Quotes By Author » George Orwell Quotes

George Orwell Quotes

Eric Arthur Blair, known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.

He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.
– George Orwell

0

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. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
– George Orwell

0

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

0

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
– George Orwell

0

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
– George Orwell

0

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
– George Orwell

0

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
– George Orwell

0

Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence.
– George Orwell

0

The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.
– George Orwell

0

War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
– George Orwell

1

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.
– George Orwell

0

The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
– George Orwell

0

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
– George Orwell

0

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
– George Orwell

0

Four legs good, two legs bad.
– George Orwell

0

Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.
– George Orwell

0

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
– George Orwell

0

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
– George Orwell

0

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
– George Orwell

1

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
– George Orwell, 1984

0

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.
– George Orwell

0

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
– George Orwell

0

In the face of pain there are no heroes.
– George Orwell

0

Big Brother is Watching You.
– George Orwell

0

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
– George Orwell

0

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
– George Orwell

0

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
– George Orwell

0

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
– George Orwell

0

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
– George Orwell

0

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
– George Orwell

0

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
– George Orwell

0

Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.
– George Orwell

0

Let’s face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.
– George Orwell

0

Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on-that is, badly.
– George Orwell

0

The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.
– George Orwell

0

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.
– George Orwell

0

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.
– George Orwell

0

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
– George Orwell

0

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.
– George Orwell

0

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.
– George Orwell

0

Football is war minus the shooting.
– George Orwell

0

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
– George Orwell

0

Copyright © 2006-2023 - Browse Quotes By Subject | Browse Quotes By Author | About Us | Blog | FAQ | Privacy Policy