George Orwell Quotes About Age

Quotes about: Age

• Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

  George Orwell

  Running, Past, Class

• All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.

  George Orwell

  Views, Age, Followers

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.289, 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.

  George Orwell

  Birthday, Lying, Political Language

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

• To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!

  George Orwell

  Brother, Past, Men

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.25, Arcturus Publishing

• Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.

  George Orwell

  Gun, Men, Bully

  George Orwell, Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940”, Harvill Secker

• 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.

  George Orwell

  Fashion, Lying, Believe

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

• 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.

  George Orwell

  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

• 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

• To say "I accept" in an age like our own is to say that you accept concentration-camps, rubber truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, bombs, aeroplanes, tinned food, machine guns, putsches, purges, slogans, Bedaux belts, gas-masks, submarines, spies, provocateurs, press-censorship, secret prisons, aspirins, Hollywood films and political murder.

  George Orwell

  Freedom, Gun, Hollywood Films

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.218, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.

  George Orwell

  Attitude, Writing, Emotional

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.311, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

  George Orwell

  Birthday, Trust, Eight

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

• To talk, simply to talk! It sounds so little, and how much it is! When you have existed to the brink of middle age in bitter loneliness, among people to whom your true opinion on every subject on earth is blasphemy, the need to talk is the greatest of all needs.

  George Orwell

  Loneliness, People, Age

  George Orwell (1974). “Burmese Days”, p.117, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• ... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.

  George Orwell

  Ideas, Age, Peculiar

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

• The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word "Art," and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K.; even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K.

  George Orwell

  Girl, Art, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.216, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• ... ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance... A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon -- so long as there is no answer to it -- gives claws to the weak.

  George Orwell

  Strong, Simple, Long

  George Orwell (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell: In front of your nose, 1945-1950”

• From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. Between the ages of about seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

  George Orwell

  Book, Writing, Should Have

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

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