George Orwell Quotes - Page 6

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• A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.

  George Orwell

  Hypocrite, Insult, Humanitarian

  George Orwell (1970). “A Collection of Essays”, p.120, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

  George Orwell

  Reality, Bumps, Belief

  After World War II; quoted in the London Financial Times, 13 May 2003.

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• One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing.

  George Orwell

  George Orwell (1987). “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”, Harvill Secker

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• War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

  George Orwell

  War, Evil, Literature

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• The planting of a tree, especially one of the long-living hardwood trees, is a gift which you can make to posterity at almost no cost and with almost no trouble, and if the tree takes root it will far outlive the visible effect of any of your other actions, good or evil.

  George Orwell

  Roots, Long, Evil

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.221, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• News is something somebody doesn't want printed; all else is advertising.

  George Orwell

  News, Want, Advertising

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• All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.

  George Orwell

  Exercise, Marketing, News

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The object of power is power.

  George Orwell

  Power, Objects

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 3, ch. 3 (1949)

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• In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

  George Orwell

  Time, Writing, Political Language

  George Orwell (1956). “The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage”, New York : Harcourt, Brace

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• All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

  George Orwell

  Future, Past, Thinking

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: I have tried to tell the truth, 1943-1944”

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• Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Freedom, Knowledge

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• Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles.

  George Orwell

  Ukraine, People, Majority

  George Orwell (2005). “In defence of English cooking”, Penguin Hardcover

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• No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?

  George Orwell

  Believe, Animal, Decision

  George Orwell (2016). “Animal Farm”, p.20, Hamilton Books

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• The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

  George Orwell

  Running, War, Intelligent

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.283, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

  George Orwell

  Country, Political, Democracy

  George Orwell (1968). “The collected essays, journalism, and letters of George Orwell”

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• If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

  George Orwell

  People, Language, Tradition

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

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• The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Enemy, Language

  "All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays".

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• One defeats a fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.

  George Orwell

  Lonely, Being Sad, Atheism

  George Orwell, Peter Davison (2013). “George Orwell: A Life in Letters”, p.448, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

  George Orwell

  Strange, Revolutionary, Patriot

  George Orwell (1998). “A patriot after all, 1940-1941”, Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd

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• A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature

  George Orwell

  Hate, Men, Receiving

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.132, Lulu.com

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• Comrades!' he cried. 'You do not imagine, I hope, that we pigs are doing this in a spirit of selfishness and privilege? Many of us actually dislike milk and apples. I dislike them myself. Our sole object in taking these things is to preserve our health. Milk and apples (this has been proved by Science, comrades) contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig. We pigs are brainworkers. The whole management and organisation of this farm depend on us. Day and night we are watching over your welfare. It is for your sake that we drink the milk and eat those apples.

  George Orwell

  Animal, Night, Pigs

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.39, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

  George Orwell

  Birthday, Fifty, Faces

  Notebook, 17 Apr. 1949. These were Orwell's last words in his notebook. He died on 21 Jan. 1950, at the age of forty-six.

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• On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

  George Orwell

  Wisdom, Time, Funny Life

  1942 'The Art of Donald McGill'.

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• It is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life.

  George Orwell

  Tragedy, Half, Way

  George Orwell (1974). “Burmese Days”, p.68, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

  George Orwell

  Life, Happiness, Truth

  Nineteen Eighty-Four pt. 1, ch. 7 (1949) See Orwell 19

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