George Orwell: Trending quotes (page 13)

George Orwell trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
George Orwell: 946   quotes 1079   likes

“There, comrades, is the answer to all our problems. It is summed up in a single word-- Man”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Problem

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Secret

“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever.”

George Orwell book 1984

Variant: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.
Source: 1984

Imagination , Future

“The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.”

George Orwell
Question , Decision

“When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Context: I have no particular love for the idealised "worker" as he appears in the bourgeois Communist's mind, but when I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

Nature

“At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.”

George Orwell Why I Write

"The Lion and the Unicorn" (1941)
Source: Why I Write
Context: Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.

Exercises , Time

“He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

God

“This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Life , Death , People , Thinking

“they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Dogs , Time

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: Why I Write

Lie , Books , Art , Drawing

“You will see me, where there is no darkness.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“A lunatic is just a minority of one.”

George Orwell book 1984

Variant: Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.
Source: 1984

“She's beautiful,' he murmured.
'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia.
'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Beauty

“History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

History

“Even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

World

“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 30
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve. Sometimes, he said, when sleeping on the Embankment, it had consoled him to look up at Mars or Jupiter and think that there were probably Embankment sleepers there. He had a curious theory about this. Life on earth, he said, is harsh because the planet is poor in the necessities of existence. Mars, with its cold climate and scanty water, must be far poorer, and life correspondingly harsher. Whereas on earth you are merely imprisoned for stealing sixpence, on Mars you are probably boiled alive. This thought cheered Bozo, I do not know why. He was a very exceptional man.

God , Pleasure , Thinking , Personality

“Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 4
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London
Context: For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

Money