 |
(no category)
|
|
All animals are equalBut some animals are more equal than others
-George Orwell
|
|
|
WAR IS PEACEFREEDOM IS SLAVERYIGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
-George Orwell
|
|
Acceptance
|
|
|
For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.
-George Orwell
|
|
Animals
|
|
|
Four legs good, two legs bad.
-George Orwell
|
|
Atheism
|
|
|
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).
-George Orwell
|
|
Authors & Writing
|
|
|
I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.
-George Orwell, Why I Write
|
|
|
Mr Wells
-George Orwell, essay Wells, Hitler And The World State
|
|
|
A scrupulous writer in every sentence that he writes will ask himself. . . What am I trying to say? What words will express it?...And he probably asks himself. . . Could I put it more shortly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing open your mind and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you
-George Orwell, "Horizon", April, 1947
|
|
|
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
-George Orwell
|
|
|
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
-George Orwell
|
|
|
For a creative writer possession of the truth is less important than emotional sincerity.
-George Orwell
|
|
Belief
|
|
|
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics --a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage --surely that proves that you are in the right?
-George Orwell
|
|
Books
|
|
|
The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
-George Orwell
|
|
Children
|
|
|
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
-George Orwell
|
|
Civilization
|
|
|
To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay.
-George Orwell
|
|
Class
|
|
|
We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose.
-George Orwell
|
|
Common Sense
|
|
|
To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.
-George Orwell
|
|
Contradiction
|
|
|
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
-George Orwell
|
|
Criticism
|
|
|
Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
-George Orwell
|
|
Defeat
|
|
|
To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.
-George Orwell
|
|
Education
|
|
|
Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
-George Orwell
|
|
|
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.
-George Orwell
|
|
Equality
|
|
|
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
-George Orwell
|
|
|
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
-George Orwell
|
|
Fanaticism
|
|
|
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.
-George Orwell
|
Books by and about George Orwell