Quotes from George Orwell

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. I should expect to find--this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify--that the German, Russian, and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

He slowed his pace a little. He was thirty and there was grey in his hair, yet he had a queer feeling that he had only just grown up. It occured to him that he was merely repeating the destiny of every human being. Everyone rebels against the money-code, and everyone sooner or later surrenders. He had kept up his rebellion a little longer than most, that was all. And he had made such a wretched failure of it!

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one's mind and alter one's whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later: and the cost, in terms of money, may be the same in each case.

There was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching.

No doubt alcohol, tobacco, and so forth, are things that a saint must avoid; but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back? Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right. And from then on he adopted the maxim, Napoleon is always right, in addition to his private motto of I will work harder.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

If one harbors anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense known to be true, are inadmissable.

It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.

If you hate violence and don't believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.

Todos los animales son iguales, pero algunos son más iguales que otros.

Philosophically, Communism and Anarchism are poles apart. Practically—i.e. in the form of society aimed at—the difference is mainly one of emphasis, but it is quite irreconcilable. The Communist's emphasis is always on centralism and efficiency, the Anarchist's on liberty and equality.

In order to hate imperialism, you have got to be part of it.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. (in The Sporting Spirit, Tribune, GB, London, December 1945)

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

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.

Even if you are a minority of one it does not make you wrong

The command of the old despotisms was Thou shalt not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou shalt. Our command is Thou art.

Dirt is a great respecter of persons; it lets you alone when you are well dressed, but as soon as your collar is gone it flies towards you from all directions.