George Orwell Quotes - Page 7

Quotes about:

• The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

  George Orwell

  Country, Freedom, Law

  George Orwell (2016). “Fifty Essays (George Orwell) (Literary Thoughts Edition)”, p.501, epubli

  18 Copy quote

• In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. When human beings are governed by "thou shalt not", the individual can practise a certain amount of eccentricity: when they are supposedly governed by "love" or "reason", he is under continuous pressure to make him behave and think in exactly the same way as everyone else.

  George Orwell

  Thinking, Animal, Law

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.305, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  42 Copy quote

• To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.

  George Orwell

  Mean, Civilization, Political

  George Orwell (2009). “Critical Essays”

  29 Copy quote

• A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a
  failure, and then fail all the more completely because he
  drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the
  English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because
  our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language
  makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

  George Orwell

  Men, Ugly, May

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.270, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  64 Copy quote

• We believe half-instinctively that evil always defeats itself in the long run. Pacifism is founded largely on this belief. Don't resist evil, and it will somehow destroy itself. But why should it? What evidence is there that it does... unless conquered from the outside by military force?

  George Orwell

  Running, Military, Believe

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.174, HMH

  8 Copy quote

• If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen.

  George Orwell

  Blow, Doe, Complaining

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.330, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• The writers I care about most and never grow tired of are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert and, among modern writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence. But I believe the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely for his power of telling a story straightforwardly and without frills.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Tired, Stories

  George Orwell, Ian Angus, Sheila Davison (1998). “The Complete Works of George Orwell: A patriot after all, 1940-1941”

  26 Copy quote

• But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Life, Political Language

  "Politics and the English Language" (1946)

  72 Copy quote

• I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Wish, Doe

  George Orwell (1997). “The complete works of George Orwell”

  15 Copy quote

• In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and incovenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban ... At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of iedas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

  George Orwell

  Country, Dark, Thinking

  9 Copy quote

• To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

  George Orwell

  Country, Doe, Totalitarianism

  George Orwell (1986). “The complete works of George Orwell”

  17 Copy quote

• I watched him [a 'fat Russian agent'] with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies -- unless one counts journalists.

  George Orwell

  Lying, Agents, Firsts

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.148, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• [A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.

  George Orwell

  Would Be, Use, World

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

  20 Copy quote

• For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

  George Orwell

  Running, Ignorance, Thinking

  George Orwell, A.M. Heath (2003). “Animal Farm and 1984”, p.282, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  39 Copy quote

• We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

  George Orwell

  War, Dirty, Fighting

  "Looking Back on the Spanish War". Book by George Orwell, § 1, 1943.

  26 Copy quote

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. If it is possible to cut a word out always cut it out. Never use the passive voice where you can use the active. Never use a foreign phrase a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

  George Orwell

  Cutting, Thinking, Passive Voice

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

  27 Copy quote

• The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.

  George Orwell

  Spring, Cost, Pleasure

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.215, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  9 Copy quote

• The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw him into prison, or they could take his job away and starve him to death. When any ordinary person spoke to a capitalist he had to cringe and bow to him, and take off his cap and address him as 'Sir'

  George Orwell

  Jobs, Land, House

  George Orwell (2004). “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.83, Penguin UK

  31 Copy quote

• Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist

  George Orwell

  Inspirational, Fascists, Pacifism

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

  27 Copy quote

• Tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country.

  George Orwell

  Country, Civilization, Tea Drinking

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

  11 Copy quote

• One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Men, Ordinary

  "Notes on Nationalism" (1945)

  16 Copy quote

• A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

  George Orwell

  Writing, Political Language, Trying

  George Orwell, Keith Gessen (2009). “All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays”, p.279, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  14 Copy quote

• The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad.

  George Orwell

  War, Home, Scotland

  19 Copy quote

• Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Window Panes, Should

  57 Copy quote

• Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

  George Orwell

  Love, Relationship, Marriage

  George Orwell (2014). “1984”, p.191, Arcturus Publishing

  18 Copy quote

Page 7 of 31

First

← Prev

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin