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George Orwell Quotes
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473 Quotes on Love, Truth, Control, Language, and Challenging Societal Norms

Immerse yourself in the profound wisdom of George Orwell, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. From love and control to truth and language, explore his timeless quotes that challenge societal norms and delve into the complexities of human nature.

George Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, was an English writer known for his powerful and insightful works that critiqued social and political systems. He used lucid prose and allegory to convey his opposition to totalitarianism and support for democratic socialism. Orwell was a versatile writer, producing literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism. His most famous works include the allegorical novella Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Additionally, his non-fiction works such as The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia are highly esteemed for their documentation of working-class life and experiences in the Spanish Civil War.

Born in India but raised and educated in England, Orwell had a varied career before establishing himself as a writer. He served as an Imperial policeman in Burma before returning to England where he began writing under the name George Orwell. Throughout his life, he worked various jobs including teaching and bookselling while also contributing occasional pieces of journalism. By the late 1920s, his writing gained recognition with the publication of his first books. Injured during the Spanish Civil War, he struggled with ill health upon returning to England. During World War II, Orwell worked as a journalist and later at the BBC from 1941 to 1943. Animal Farm's release in 1945 brought him widespread fame shortly before his death. As one of Britain's greatest writers since 1945, George Orwell continues to have a significant impact on popular culture and language through terms such as "Orwellian" which describes oppressive social practices found in his works like "Big Brother," "Thought Police," and "Newspeak."

✵ 25. June 1903 – 21. January 1950
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George Orwell: 473   quotes 1079   likes

George Orwell Quotes

“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)

“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

“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

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

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Intelligence

“In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Religion

“Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac.”

George Orwell
War

“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.”

George Orwell

"In Front of Your Nose" http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose, Tribune (22 March 1946)
Context: The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

World , Past

“You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told her.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man - greetings!”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Age , Past , Future , Dead

“It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and out in Paris and London (1933), Ch. 33
Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

People

“But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Love , Victory

“If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.”

George Orwell

Source: All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

Exercises

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Source: Politics and the English Language (1946)

“I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Hate

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Reality

“Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Life

“A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims… but accomplices”

George Orwell

According to Reuters Fact Check team there is no evidence of the quotation in collections of Orwell’s works. https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-orwell-quote-corrupt-idUSKCN2AT2W5

People

“The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

George Orwell

Notes on Nationalism (1945)

“If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

Life , Books , Idea

“The distinguishing mark of man is the, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The end was contained in the beginning.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: "Why I Write" http://www.k-1.com/Orwell/site/work/essays/write.html, Gangrel (Summer 1946)
Context: Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us.
It is not easy. It raises problems of construction and of language, and it raises in a new way the problem of truthfulness.

Love , Pleasure , Feeling

“Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Life , Hunger , Law , Disappointment

“Until they become conscious, they will never rebel”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

Star

“If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Hope

“He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Music

“You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

World , Past , Future , Sea

“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Intelligence , Understanding

“The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.”

George Orwell

Letter to Malcolm Muggeridge (4 December 1948), quoted in Malcolm Muggeridge: A Life (1980) by Ian Hunter
Source: The Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to The Complete Works of George Orwell

“His answer to every problem, every setback was “I will work harder!” —which he had adopted as his personal motto.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Problem , Personality

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”

George Orwell book 1984

Variant: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Source: 1984

Freedom

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

George Orwell

"Don't Let Colonel Blimp Ruin the Home Guard" article for the Evening Standard, 8 January 1941
Context: Even as it stands, the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. THAT RIFLE HANGING ON THE WALL OF THE WORKING-CLASS FLAT OR LABOURER'S COTTAGE, IS THE SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY. IT IS OUR JOB TO SEE THAT IT STAYS THERE.

Democracy

“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Love , Fear , Victory