Quotes from George Orwell

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

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.

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.

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.

they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget; but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!

To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armour, the apostles of martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.

they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

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.

Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats.

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives but on balance life is suffering and only the very sound or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. 

Four legs good, two legs bad.

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

The only good human being is a dead one.

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.