George Orwell quotes

„Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.“

—  George Orwell

„If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.“

—  George Orwell, book Animal Farm

Sometimes paraphrased as "Liberty is telling people what they do not want to hear."
Variant: Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Source: Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

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

—  George Orwell

„Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.“

—  George Orwell, book Politics and the English Language

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„Big Brother is Watching You.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer…“

—  George Orwell

„Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

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

—  George Orwell

Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays by Herbert Read, Poetry Quarterly (Winter 1945)
Context: Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion, and one should recognise it as such, but one ought also to stick to one's own world-view, even at the price of seeming old-fashioned: for that world-view springs out of experiences that the younger generation has not had, and to abandon it is to kill one's intellectual roots.

„The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.“

—  George Orwell, book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Variant: For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
Source: 1984

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Source: 1984
Context: 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.
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.

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

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984

„If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.“

—  George Orwell, book 1984

Source: 1984