George Orwell: Trending quotes

"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

“[...]I should say that it is a good rule of thumb never to mention religion if you can possibly avoid it.”

George Orwell

Letter to Humphry House (11 April 1940). The Collected Essays, Journalism & Letters, George Orwell: An Age Like This, 1920–1940, Editors: Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus. p. 530 http://books.google.com/books?id=0j2qODEJkdoC&pg=PA530#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Religion

“If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

George Orwell

Attributed to Orwell by John H. Bunzel, president of San Jose State University, as reported in Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (1977), p. 151; but not found in Orwell's works or in reports contemporaneous with his life. Possibly a paraphrase of Orwell's description of the rationale behind Newspeak in 1984.
Disputed

People , Thinking

“As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.”

George Orwell

From a review of Malcolm Muggeridge's The Thirties, in New English Weekly (25 April 1940)
Context: It is all very well to be "advanced" and "enlightened," to snigger at Colonel Blimp and proclaim your emancipation from all traditional loyalties, but a time comes when the sand of the desert is sodden red and what have I done for thee, England, my England? As I was brought up in this tradition myself I can recognise it under strange disguises, and also sympathise with it, for even at its stupidest and most sentimental it is a comelier thing than the shallow self-righteousness of the left-wing intelligentsia.