Quotes from George Orwell

Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

At age 50, every man has the face he deserves.

But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.

For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.

For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.

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

He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

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

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

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

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being but to remind him that he is already degraded.

The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.

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

To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.

you can't live life without consequences. They occur regardless of the decision. A consequence is an outcome, good or bad. You can live life without regrets and thats what makes it worth it. Or you could live with regret and end up hanging yourself but thats still good. You paid for the rope so your feeding someones family. Something to be proud of before you kick the bucket

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

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

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

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.