George Orwell: Trending quotes (page 11)

“What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.”

“Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.”

“We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.”

“It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand.”

“Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”

“Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

“We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.”

“Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

“Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop.”

“In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body.”

“Liberal: a power worshipper without power.”

“You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.”

“To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”

“A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

“Poverty frees them from normal standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work”

“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”

“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”