“[…] you can get anything in this world if you genuinely don't want it.”
George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
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@xy, member from Sept. 25, 2023“A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"Why I Write," Gangrel (Summer 1946)
“Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
Source: An Age Like This: 1920-1940
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life.
“When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”
George Orwell book Shooting an Elephant
Source: Shooting an Elephant
“It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.”
George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London
Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 9; a remark by Boris
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.”
George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia
Charles Dickens (1939)
Source: Homage to Catalonia
“He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.”
George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying
Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Source: Why I Write
Context: 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.
But 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.