Unlock the literary legacy of George Orwell with this compelling collection of 114 powerful quotes. Explore the profound insights and thought-provoking ideas that have made Orwell a timeless literary figure. From his iconic works like “1984” and “Animal Farm,” these quotes offer timeless wisdom, social commentary, and a glimpse into the human condition. Immerse yourself in Orwell’s words and be inspired to reflect, challenge, and remember.
George Orwell Quotes
1- “The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits “atrocities” but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.” -George Orwell
2- “The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books.” -George Orwell
3- “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 the battlefield.” -George Orwell
4- “One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death.” -George Orwell
5- “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” -George Orwell
6- “Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.” -George Orwell
7- “Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” -George Orwell
8- “When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic. Women face childbed and the scrubbing brush, revolutionaries keep their mouths shut in the torture chamber, battleships go down with their guns still firing when their decks are awash.” -George Orwell
9- “Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth.” -George Orwell
10- “The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.” -George Orwell
11- “In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions.” -George Orwell
12- “A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things.” -George Orwell
13- “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell
14- “Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.” -George Orwell
14- “Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” -George Orwell
15- “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.’” -George Orwell
16- “We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.” -George Orwell
17- “Using clichés is a substitute for thinking.” -George Orwell
18- “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” -George Orwell
19- “The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected moment.” -George Orwell
20- “Think of life as it really is, think of the details of life; and then think that there is no meaning in it, no purpose, no goal except the grave. Surely only fools or self-deceivers, or those whose lives are exceptionally fortunate, can face that thought without flinching.” -George Orwell
21- “When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist – after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.” -George Orwell
22- “The nation is bound together by an invisible chain.” -George Orwell
23- “If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.” -George Orwell
24- “The existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions.” -George Orwell
25- “When I see a policeman with a club beating a man on the ground, I don’t have to ask whose side I’m on.” -George Orwell
26- “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” -George Orwell
27- “The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile.” -George Orwell
28- “The distinguishing mark of a man is the hand, the instrument with which he does all his mischief.” -George Orwell
29- “England will still be England, an everlasting animal, stretching into the future and the past and like all living things having the power to change out of all recognition and yet remain the same.” -George Orwell
30- “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” -George Orwell
31- “The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.” -George Orwell
32- “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” -George Orwell
33- “It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children” -George Orwell
34- “People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.” -George Orwell
35- “The human beings did not hate Animal Farm any less now that it was prospering; indeed, they hated it more than ever.” -George Orwell
36- “On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” -George Orwell
37- “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.” -George Orwell
38- “Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.” -George Orwell
39- “Orthodoxy is the ability to say two and two make five when faith requires it.” -George Orwell
40- “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing” -George Orwell
41- “At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts.” -George Orwell
42- “It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.” -George Orwell
43- “The four great motives for writing prose are sheer egoism, esthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse, and political purpose.” -George Orwell
44- “In the face of pain there are no heroes.” -George Orwell
45- “Take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another.” -George Orwell
46- “In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.” -George Orwell
47- “There are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic.” -George Orwell
48- “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” -George Orwell
49- “But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.” -George Orwell
50- “Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it. This is an illusion.” -George Orwell
51- “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.” -George Orwell
52- “Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a ‘good’ man is squeezing the trigger… have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.” -George Orwell
53- “In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.” -George Orwell
54- “A world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet.” -George Orwell
55- “Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn’t do the hangman’s job.” -George Orwell
56- “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” -George Orwell
57- “You must be an intellectual. A normal person would never believe a thing like that.” -George Orwell
58- “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” -George Orwell
59- “Football, a game in which everyone gets hurt and every nation has its own style of play which seems unfair to foreigners.” -George Orwell
60- “Threats to freedom of speech, writing, and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect, and unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.” -George Orwell
61- “Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.” -George Orwell
62- “There is something wrong with a regime that requires a pyramid of corpses every few years.” -George Orwell
63- “International football is the continuation of war by other means.” -George Orwell
64- “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” -George Orwell
65- “A humanitarian is always a hypocrite.” -George Orwell
66- “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” -George Orwell
67- “The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.” -George Orwell
68- “Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution, one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” -George Orwell
69- “No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.” -George Orwell
70- “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” -George Orwell
71- “And I believe that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph again.” -George Orwell
72- “Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” -George Orwell
73- “The typical socialist… a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaler and often with vegetarian leanings.” -George Orwell
74- “It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one’s intelligence.” -George Orwell
75- “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” -George Orwell
76- “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” -George Orwell
77- “All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.” -George Orwell
78- “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” -George Orwell
79- “Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip.” -George Orwell
80- “By preaching the doctrine that nothing is to be admired except the steel and concrete, one merely makes it a little surer that human beings will have no outlet for their surplus energy except in hatred and leader worship.” -George Orwell
81- “One of the effects of a safe and civilized life is an immense over sensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting.” -George Orwell
82- “A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.” -George Orwell
83- “After 40, a man is responsible for his face.” -George Orwell
84- “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.” -George Orwell
85- “”A minority of one”… the definition of insanity.” -George Orwell
86- “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
87- “Weakness is strength.” -George Orwell
88- “You are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself.” -George Orwell
89- “Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.” -George Orwell
90- “Will the man in the street ever feel that freedom of the mind is as important and as much in need of being defended as his daily bread?” -George Orwell
91- “A peace that is truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war.” -George Orwell
92- “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.” -George Orwell
93- “Tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country.” -George Orwell
94- “There was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom.” -George Orwell
95- “Four legs good, two legs bad.” -George Orwell
96- “The imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.” -George Orwell
97- “Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.” -George Orwell
98- “The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.” -George Orwell
99- “Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” -George Orwell
100- “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.” -George Orwell
101- “The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” -George Orwell
102- “No one can get up much enthusiasm for a Government which puts you in jail if you open your mouth.” -George Orwell
103- “He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.” -George Orwell
104- “Looking at the whole world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery.” -George Orwell
105- “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.” -George Orwell
106- “In every one of those little stucco boxes, there’s some poor bastard who’s never free except when he’s fast asleep and dreaming” -George Orwell
107- “Within any important issue, there are always aspects no one wishes to discuss.” -George Orwell
108- “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” -George Orwell
109- “If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?” -George Orwell
110- “He is a slave with a semblance of liberty which is worse than the most cruel slavery.” -George Orwell
111- “There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher’s daughter.” -George Orwell
112- “Freedom of speech is real.” -George Orwell
113- “The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.” -George Orwell
114- “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” -George Orwell
