George Orwell: Trending quotes

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“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

People

“They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Beauty

“Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.”

George Orwell book Coming Up for Air

Source: Coming Up for Air, Part 3, Ch. 1

Idea

“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

Love , Wise

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

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Past , Future

“History is written by the winners.”

George Orwell

"As I Please" (1943–1947)
Context: During part of 1941 and 1942, when the Luftwaffe was busy in Russia, the German radio regaled its home audience with stories of devastating air raids on London. Now, we are aware that those raids did not happen. But what use would our knowledge be if the Germans conquered Britain? For the purpose of a future historian, did those raids happen, or didn't they? The answer is: If Hitler survives, they happened, and if he falls they didn't happen. So with innumerable other events of the past ten or twenty years. Is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion a genuine document? Did Trotsky plot with the Nazis? How many German aeroplanes were shot down in the Battle of Britain? Does Europe welcome the New Order? In no case do you get one answer which is universally accepted because it is true: in each case you get a number of totally incompatible answers, one of which is finally adopted as the result of a physical struggle. History is written by the winners.

History

“The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Göring’s bombing planes.”

George Orwell

Part II : Shopkeepers At War, § II
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Cars

“Ah, the poverty, the shortness the disappointment of human joy! For in reality car en realite, what is the duration of the supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that- dust, ashes, nothingness.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 2, Charlie

Love , Disappointment , Cars , Reality

“It is sometimes a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is changing the conditions of warfare. In the next great war, we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

War , History , Thinking , Change

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

George Orwell

Source: All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

Time

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Reality

“The distinguishing mark of man is the, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“Big Brother is Watching You.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“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.

Truth , Appearance

“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Change

“The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Feeling

“In my small way I have been fighting for years against the systematic faking of history which now goes on.”

George Orwell

Letter to Frank Barber (15 December 1944)
The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, George Orwell: As I Please, 1943-1945, Editors: Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus.  p.  292.

Fight , Way , History