George Orwell Quotes - Page 19

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You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

George Orwell

Darkness, Sound, Assumption

"1984". Book by George Orwell, June 8, 1949.

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It was true that there was no such person as Comrade Oglivy, but a few lines of print and a couple of faked photographs would soon bring him into existence... Comrade Oglivy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.

George Orwell

Couple, Past, Lines

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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

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In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated. And so for the last ten years, I have been convinced that the destruction of the Soviet myth was essential if we wanted a revival of the socialist movement.

George Orwell

Country, Russia, Socialist Countries

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think, 1947-1948”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

George Orwell

Peace, War, Intelligent

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In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.

George Orwell

Kings, Past, Promise

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.294, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

George Orwell

Party, Blow, Hatred

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

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[What Hayek] does not see, or will not admit, [is] that a return to "free" competition means for the great mass of people a tyranny probably worse, because more irresponsible, than that of the State. The trouble with competitions is that somebody wins them. Professor Hayek denies that free capitalism necessarily leads to monopoly, but in practice that is where it has led, and since the vast majority of people would far rather have State regimentation than slumps and unemployment, the drift towards collectivism is bound to continue if popular opinion has any say in the matter.

George Orwell

Mean, Winning, Practice

George Orwell (2003). “Orwell: The Observer Years”, Atlantic Books (UK)

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For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.

George Orwell

Loneliness, Memorable, Two

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I felt as if I was the only person awake in a city of sleepwalkers. That's an illusion, of course. When you walk through a crowd of strangers it's next door to impossible not to imagine that they're all waxworks, but probably they're thinking just the same about you.

George Orwell

Thinking, Doors, Cities

George Orwell (1976). “The Penguin complete novels of George Orwell”

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Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

George Orwell

Men, Thinking, Perfection

"Why Socialists Don't Believe in Fun". Tribune, December 20, 1943.

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I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.

George Orwell

Memories, Evil, Spain

George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.235, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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The war is waged against its own subjects and its object is not the victory...but to keep the very structure of society intact.

George Orwell

War, Victory, Structure

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In any form of art designed to appeal to large numbers of people,...[t]he rich man is usually 'bad', and his machinations are invariably frustrated.:; 'Good poor man defeats bad rich man' is an accepted formula.

George Orwell

Art, Men, Numbers

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

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It was with the last revolution and the coming of INGSOC (Inglish/English Socialism) that the latest High learnt how to keep their position permanently - by cultivating ignorance among the other classes and by constantly surveying them through the Thought Police. Part of this strategy included the maintenance of a state of continual warfare, which Goldstein discussed in the third chapter. The three major powers were not fighting this perpetual war for victory; they were fighting to keep a state of emergency always present as the surest guarantee of authoritarianism.

George Orwell

War, Ignorance, Fighting

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In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

George Orwell

Party, Writing, Squares

George Orwell (2001). “Orwell and Politics”, p.459, Penguin UK

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The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually, the three philosophies are barely distinguishable.

George Orwell

Philosophy, Two, Common Sense

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

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To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words.... Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence.

George Orwell

Art, Struggle, Writing

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

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I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.

George Orwell

Education, Punishment, Doubt

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In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.

George Orwell

Country, Philosophy, Russia

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “It is what I think, 1947-1948”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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She was very young...she still expected something from life, she did not understand that to push an inconvenient person over a cliff solves nothing.

George Orwell

Cliffs, Young, Solve

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A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.

George Orwell

War, Ignorance, Past

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But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

George Orwell

Might, Horror, Trouble

George Orwell (2016). “1984”, p.90, ENRICH CULTURE GROUP LIMITED

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Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.

George Orwell

Pain, Hero, Wish

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.515, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.

George Orwell

Country, Democracy, Action

George Orwell (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.171, 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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