George Orwell: Trending quotes (page 12)

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“[…] 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

World

“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comforable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

War , Way , Intelligence , Sea

“The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

George Orwell

"Why I Write," Gangrel (Summer 1946)

Art

“Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution”

George Orwell

Source: An Age Like This: 1920-1940

“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.”

George Orwell

"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.

Life , People , Imagination , Suffering

“When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”

George Orwell book Shooting an Elephant

Source: Shooting an Elephant

Freedom

“He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Pain , Fear , Effort

“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

People

“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

Fight

“Winston was gelatinous with fatigue.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Writing a novel is agony.”

George Orwell

“Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.”

George Orwell
Change

“Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Question , Thinking , Learning

“The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

“All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.”

George Orwell Why I Write

"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.