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“He had reached the age when the future ceases to be a rosy blur and becomes actual and menacing.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

“One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 7; a remark by Boris

“Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 7

“No one I met at this time — doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients — failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

“But is it really necessary, in 1947, to teach children to use expressions like "native" and "Chinaman"?”

George Orwell

"As I Please," Daily Herald/Tribune (27 February 1947) http://www.netcharles.com/orwell/essays/asiplease1947-01.htm#Feb27 "As I Please" (1943–1947)

“There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when 'our' side commits it.”

George Orwell

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

“Beauty is meaningless until it is shared.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

Source: Burmese Days (1934), Ch. IV

“Gordon and his friends had quite an exciting time with their 'subversive ideas'. For a whole year they ran an unofficial monthly paper called the Bolshevik, duplicated with jellygraph. It advocated Socialism, free love, the dismemberment of the British Empire, the abolition of the Army and Navy, and so on and so forth. It was great fun. Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 3

“Let a politician die, and his worst enemies will stand up on the ﬂoor of the House and utter pious lies in his honour, but a writer or artist must be sniffed at, at least if he is any good.”

George Orwell

As I Please (1943–1947)

“I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income.”

George Orwell

The Road to Wigan Pier Diary 6-10 February (1936)

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

George Orwell

“If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.”

George Orwell

"Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels" (1946)

“Man is not a Yahoo, but he is rather like a Yahoo and needs to be reminded of it from time to time.”

George Orwell

Review of Tropic of Cancer, in New English Weekly (14 November 1935)

“It was only after the Soviet régime became unmistakably totalitarian that English intellectuals, in large numbers, began to show an interest in it. Burnham, although the English russophile intelligentsia would repudiate him, is really voicing their secret wish: the wish to destroy the old, equalitarian version of Socialism and usher in a hierarchical society where the intellectual can at last get his hands on the whip.”

George Orwell

"Second Thoughts on James Burnham," Polemic (summer 1946)

“Looking round that filthy room, with raw meat lying among the refuse on the floor, and cold, clotted saucepans sprawling everywhere, and the sink blocked and coated with grease, I used to wonder whether there could be a restaurant in the world as bad as ours. But the other three all said they had been in dirtier places.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 21; on the state of the kitchen at the newly opened Auberge.

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

George Orwell

From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)

“Anyone who knows of a provable instance of colour discrimination ought always to expose it.”

George Orwell

"As I Please," Tribune (11 August 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ As I Please (1943–1947)

“Being a beggar, he said, was not his fault, and he refused either to have any compunction about it or to let it trouble him. He was the enemy of society, and quite ready to take to crime if he saw a good opportunity. He refused on principle to be thrifty. In the summer he saved nothing, spending his surplus earnings on drink, as he did not care about women. If he was penniless when winter came on, then society must look after him. He was ready to extract every penny he could from charity, provided that he was not expected to say thank you for it. He avoided religious charities, however, for he said it stuck in his throat to sing hymns for buns. He had various other points of honour; for instance, it was his boast that never in his life, even when starving, had he picked up a cigarette end. He considered himself in a class above the ordinary run of beggars, who, he said, were an abject lot, without even the decency to be ungrateful.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

On "Bozo", in Ch. 30
Down and out in Paris and London (1933)

“But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one—not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.”

George Orwell

"As I Please," Tribune (24 March 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/wif/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)

“A phrase much used in political circles in this country is "playing into the hands of". It is a sort of charm or incantation to silence uncomfortable truths. When you are told that by saying this, that or the other you are "playing into the hands of" some sinister enemy, you know that it is your duty to shut up immediately.”

George Orwell

"As I Please," Tribune (9 June 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/tpithoa/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)