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George Orwell Quotes about Children

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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

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.

George Orwell
Children, Writing, Thinking
George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children

George Orwell
Children, People, Normal
George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.126, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

George Orwell
Football, Children, Home

The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.

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

One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.

George Orwell
Love, Children, Adults
George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.44, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

George Orwell
Time, Children, Humorous
George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.45, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Never have ideas about children, and never have ideas for them.

George Orwell
Teacher, Children, Ideas

I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created a sort of private world in which I could get my own back for my failure in everyday life.

George Orwell
Lonely, Children, Ambition
George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.309, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

She had had her momentary flowering, a year, perhaps, of wildrose beauty, and then she had suddenly swollen like a fertilized fruit and grown hard and red and coarse, and then her life had been laundering, scrubbing, laundering, first for children, then for grandchildren, over thirty years. At the end of it she was still singing.

George Orwell
Children, Years, Singing
George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view.

George Orwell
Children, Views, Childhood
George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.14, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.

George Orwell
Mother, Children, England
George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.254, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

George Orwell
Children, Real, Thinking
George Orwell (2017). “The Collected Non-Fiction”, Penguin UK

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