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George Orwell Quotes - Page 7

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I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

Writing, Wish, Doe

George Orwell (1997). “The complete works of George Orwell”

We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?

Running, Military, Believe

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.174, HMH

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Inspirational, Life, Political Language

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)

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

Wisdom, Time, Funny Life

1942 'The Art of Donald McGill'.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

Country, Doe, Totalitarianism

George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

Country, Dark, Thinking

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.

Country, Political, Democracy

George Orwell (1968). “The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell”

[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.

Would Be, Use, World

George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

War, Dirty, Fighting

"Looking Back on the Spanish War". Book by George Orwell, § 1, 1943.

To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

Mean, Civilization, Political

George Orwell (2009). “Critical Essays”

The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

Believe, Tired, Stories

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”

The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad.

War, Home, Scotland

It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.

Tragedy, Half, Way

George Orwell (1974). “Burmese Days”, p.68, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

Running, Ignorance, Thinking

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as 'Sir'

Jobs, Land, House

George Orwell (2004). “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.83, Penguin UK

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

Love, Relationship, Marriage

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.191, Arcturus Publishing

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

Believe, Men, Ordinary

"Notes on Nationalism" (1945)

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.

Expression, Giving, Anxiety

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist

Inspirational, Fascists, Pacifism

George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

Writing, Window Panes, Should

The essential point here is that all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be fighting on the same side. Probably we could do with a little less talk about' capitalist' and 'proletarian' and a little more about the robbers and the robbed.

Fighting, Insecure, Economic Inequality

George Orwell (2016). “The Road to Wigan Pier”, p.150, Jester House Publishing

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Lying, Party, Past

Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 1, ch. 3 (1949) See Orwell 19

Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.

Animal, Law, Public Opinion

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

Dry Up, Creative, Freedom Of Speech

George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: As I please, 1943-1945”

Orthodoxy is the ability to say two and two make five when faith requires it.

Faith, Two, Orthodoxy

"Nineteen Eighty-Four". Book by George Orwell, 1949.

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