George Orwell: Trending quotes

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“Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

George Orwell

“If you canthat staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.”

George Orwell

"In Front of Your Nose," Tribune (22 March 1946)

“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”

George Orwell

Possibly a paraphrase of Bertrand Russell in My Philosophical Development (1959): "This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them." It is similar in meaning to Orwell's line from Notes on Nationalism (1945): "One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool." However, Russell was commenting not on politics, as Orwell was, but on some philosophers and their ideas about language.
Misattributed
Variant: Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.

“This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”

George Orwell book Shooting an Elephant

Source: Shooting an Elephant

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

George Orwell

"Extracts from a Manuscript Notebook" (1949), The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, vol. 4 (1968)

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Several of them would have protested if they could have found the right arguments.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“To die hating them, that was freedom.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984