George Orwell Quotes - Page 17

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Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?

George Orwell

Liberty, Ribbons

"Complete novels of George Orwell".

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The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.

George Orwell

Long, People, Evil

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.146, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

George Orwell

Science, Past, Two

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.178, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget; but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!

George Orwell

Heart, Years, Tears

George Orwell, Duncan Macmillan, Robert Icke (2013). “1984 (Nineteen Eighty-Four)”, p.45, Oberon Books

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To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.

George Orwell

Air, Long, Nineteen

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.246, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.

George Orwell

Hatred, Leader, Doctrine

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Smothered under journalism, 1946”

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It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

George Orwell

Forgotten, Should, Adopted

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Poverty is spiritual halitosis.

George Orwell

Spiritual, Poverty

George Orwell (1969). “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, p.98, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

George Orwell

War, Literature, Oceania

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.135, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live-did live, from habit that became instinct-in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

George Orwell

Knowing, Police, Darkness

George Orwell (2003). “1984”, Plume Books

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If one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar's livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course - but then, many reputable trades are quite useless.

George Orwell

Doors, Weather, Differences

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Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If it seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin.

George Orwell

Memories, Past, Years

1940 Inside theWhale,'My Country Right or Left'.

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When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.He becomes a sort of hollow,posing dummy,the conventional figure of a sahib.For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives",and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him.He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it.

George Orwell

Men, White Man, Tyrants

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The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world, a series of fabulous countries into which one can retreat at odd moments throughout the rest of life, and which in some cases can survive a visit to the real countries which they are supposed to represent.

George Orwell

Country, Real, Book

George Orwell (1953). “Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays”

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It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body... On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralysed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth.

George Orwell

Pain, Struggle, Fighting

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison “The Complete Works of George Orwell: Nineteen eighty-four”

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Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

George Orwell

Skulls, Eyes Watching

George Orwell (2013). “Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Annotated Edition”, p.42, Penguin UK

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Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

George Orwell

Wisdom, Marketing, Buckets

Attributed

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I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.

George Orwell

Fighting, Men, Class

"The Road to Wigan Pier". Book by George Orwell (Diary 6-10 February), March 8, 1937.

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The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

George Orwell

Intelligent, Men, Personality

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.130, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

George Orwell

Water, Poetry, Literature

The Road toWigan Pier ch. 11 (1937)

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The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. WHO wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.

George Orwell

Fear, Party, Important

"1984".

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Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

George Orwell

Latin, Greek, Notion

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.161, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.

George Orwell

Mistake, Past, Secret

George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.164, Arcturus Publishing

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Friend of fatherless! Fountain of happiness! Lord of the swill-bucket! Oh, how my soul is on Fire when I gaze at thy Calm and commanding eye. Like the sun in the sky, Comrade Napoleon! Thou are the giver of All thy creatures love, Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon; Every beast great or small, Sleeps at peace in his stall, Thou watchest over all, Comrade Napoleon! Had I a sucking-pig, Ere he had grown as big Even as a pint bottle or a a rolling-pin He should have learned to be Faithful and true to thee, Yes, his first squeak should be Comrade Napoleon!

George Orwell

Sleep, Eye, Fire

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As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are only 'doing their duty'

George Orwell

Writing, Flying, Trying

George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Born: June 25, 1903
Died: January 21, 1950
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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