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George Orwell Quotes about Lying

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The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

Lying, Past, Forgotten

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.173, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Peace, War, Lying

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

Lying, Objectivity, Deceit

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Birthday, Lying, Political Language

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.

Truth, Lying, Believe

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink

War, Lying, Exercise

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.467, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

Lying, Writing, Political Language

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

Lying, Choices, Freedom And Happiness

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

I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

Lying, Agents, Firsts

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.148, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.

Fashion, Lying, Believe

"Looking Back on the SpanishWar" sec. 4 (1942)

Some people have a knack, for example, of being able to tell when someone's lying to them. They may not know what the truth is, but they can tell when someone is trying to lead them astray or sell them something shady. I think he had that ability to an amazing degree. I also think he thought, without saying it explicitly, that you can convince a crowd of something that's not true more easily than you can one person at a time.

Lying, Book, Thinking

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.

Lying, There Is Hope, 1984 Movie

George Orwell (2012). “1984”, p.23, Oberon Books

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

Lying, Men, Giving

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.210, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.

Honesty, Integrity, Lying

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

Lying, Cities, Police

1946 'Some Thoughts on the Common Toad'.

It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.

Wall, Lying, Heart

George Orwell (2003). “Nineteen Eighty-four”, Penguin Mass Market

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.

Lying, Telling The Truth, Propaganda

1942 Diary entry,14 Mar.

Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

War, Lying, Drug

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.31, Arcturus Publishing

If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.

Lying, Hands, Egypt

"Nineteen Eighty-four".

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

Art, Lying, Book

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.315, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. 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 spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics'. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

Lying, Latin, Real

George Orwell, Peter Hobley Davison (2001). “Orwell and politics: Animal farm in the context of essays, reviews and letters selected from the complete works of George Orwell”, Penguin Modern Classics

For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.

Lying, Home, Fate

George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

He wondered vaguely whether in the abolished past it had been a normal experience to lie in bed like this, in the cool of a summer evening, a man and a woman with no clothes on, making love when they chose, talking of what they chose, not feeling any compulsion to get up, simply lying there and listening to peaceful sounds outside. Surely there could never have been a time when that seemed ordinary?

Summer, Lying, Past

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.238, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.

Selfish, Lying, Writing

1946 'Why I Write'.

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