“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”
Attributed to Orwell by John H. Bunzel, president of San Jose State University, as reported in Phyllis Schlafly, The Power of the Positive Woman (1977), p. 151; but not found in Orwell's works or in reports contemporaneous with his life. Possibly a paraphrase of Orwell's description of the rationale behind Newspeak in 1984.
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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”
Source: A Room of One's Own (1929), Ch. 1, p. 18
Context: The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
Source: The Magic Mountain (1924), Ch. 4
Context: Writing well was almost the same as thinking well, and thinking well was the next thing to acting well. All moral discipline, all moral perfection derived from the soul of literature, from the soul of human dignity, which was the moving spirit of both humanity and politics. Yes, they were all one, one and the same force, one and the same idea, and all of them could be comprehended in one single word... The word was — civilization!
“You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and write clearly”
The Storm Over the University (December 6, 1990)
Context: Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to acquire the skills of writing and speaking that make for candor, rigor, and clarity. You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and write clearly.
“It's well we cannot hear the screams we make in other people's dreams.”
“Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't speak well of yourself.”
Professor Van Helsing to Dr. Seward
Dracula (1897)
Context: You reason well, and your wit is bold, but you are too prejudiced. You do not let your eyes see nor your ears hear, and that which is outside your daily life is not of account to you. Do you not think that there are things which you cannot understand, and yet which are, that some people see things that others cannot? But there are things old and new which must not be contemplated by men's eyes, because they know, or think they know, some things which other men have told them. Ah, it is the fault of our science that it wants to explain all, and if it explain not, then it says there is nothing to explain. But yet we see around us every day the growth of new beliefs, which think themselves new, and which are yet but the old, which pretend to be young, like the fine ladies at the opera.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics (1980)
“To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man.”
