George Orwell Quotes

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

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

Lack of money means discomfort, means squalid worries, means shortage of tobacco, means ever-present consciousness of failure-above all, it means loneliness.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile.

Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.

No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.

If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.

When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.

it was only a hopeless fantasy, it passed like an april day, but a look and a word and the dreams they stirred they have stolen my heart away.

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

Man's greatest drive is not love or hate but to change another person's writing.

Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.

The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.

Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip.

Big Brother is watching you.

Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty becasue they have no intellect.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

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

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.

One must choose between God and Man, and all "radicals" and "progressives", from the mildest liberal to the most extreme anarchist, have in effect chosen Man.

We have sunk so low it has become the obligation of every decent, thinking individual to re-state the obvious!

A human being is primarily a bag for putting food into.

It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

Rich people are poor people with money.

The object of power is power.

Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O Lord, give me money, only money.

One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense over sensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting.

Orthodoxy is the ability to say two and two make five when faith requires it.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

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

Good writing is like a windowpane.

The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to do.

It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty. It would never endure.' 'Why not?' 'It would have no vitality. It would disintegrate. It would commit suicide.

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.