George Orwell Quotes - Page 24

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...the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

George Orwell

War, Survival, Consciousness

George Orwell (1983). “1984”, p.415, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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... 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)

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The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.

George Orwell

War, Party, Independent

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

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Weakness is strength.

George Orwell

Bible, Weakness

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Reality is inside the skull.

George Orwell

Reality, Skulls

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.356, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.

George Orwell

Trying, Instinct, Hard

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

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He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.

George Orwell

Lonely, Ghost

George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.129, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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A scrupulous writer in every sentence that he writes will ask himself. . . What am I trying to say? What words will express it?...And he probably asks himself. . . Could I put it more shortly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing open your mind and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you

George Orwell

Writing, Mind, Trying

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There were times when the fact of impending death seemed as palpable as the bed they lay on, and they would cling together with a sort of despairing sensuality, like a damned soul grasping at his last morsel of pleasure when the clock is within five minutes of striking. But there were also times when they had the illusion not only of safety but of permanence.

George Orwell

Safety, Soul, Together

George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.1256, Penguin UK

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Last of all came the cat, who looked round, as usual, for the warmest place, and finally squeezed herself in between Boxer and Clover; there she purred contentedly throughout Major's speech without listening to a word of what he was saying.

George Orwell

Cat, Listening, Usual

David Ball, George Orwell (1984). “George Orwell's Animal Farm”, p.28, Barron's Educational Series

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At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

George Orwell

Thinking, Ideas, People

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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We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.

George Orwell

Dust, Knowing, True Life

George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.1280, Penguin UK

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It's a wonderful feeling to have a niece like you
Because you are always so dear
You are so dear no matter the year
But all throughout each day of the year
There could hardly be a town in the South of England where you
could throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.

George Orwell

Niece, Years, Feelings

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Revolutions only effect a radical improvement when the masses are alert and know how to chuck out their leaders as soon as the latter have done their job.

George Orwell

Jobs, Leader, Revolution

George Orwell, Peter Davison (2013). “George Orwell: A Life in Letters”, p.334, W. W. Norton & Company

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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

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Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy.

George Orwell

Writing, Order, Long

George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.164, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.

George Orwell

Years, Opposites, Civilization

George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I belong to the Left: 1945”

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

George Orwell

Teacher, Children, Ideas

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In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people - the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.

George Orwell

Numbers, People, Important

"Shooting an Elephant" (1936)

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She's beautiful,' he murmured. 'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia. 'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.

George Orwell

Beautiful, Style, Hips

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

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Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.

George Orwell

Wings, Two, Enemy

David Ball, George Orwell (1984). “George Orwell's Animal Farm”, p.33, Barron's Educational Series

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The moralist and the revolutionary are constantly undermining one another. Marx exploded a hundred tons of dynamite beneath the moralist position, and we are still living in the echo of that tremendous crash. But already, somewhere or other, the sappers are at work and fresh dynamite is being tamped in place to blow Marx at the moon. Then Marx, or somebody like him, will come back with yet more dynamite, and so the process continues, to an end we cannot foresee.

George Orwell

Blow, Moon, Echoes

George Orwell (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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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

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In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted; in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.

George Orwell

Country, Freedom Of Speech, Helpful

George Orwell (1998). “The complete works of George Orwell”

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Some hams hanging in the kitchen were taken out for burial

George Orwell

Taken, Kitchen, Ham

George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.8, Hamilton Books

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

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