George Orwell Quotes

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell

Joke, Dirty, Mental

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
George Orwell

Before, After, Generation

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.
George Orwell

Human, Perfection, Seek

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

Fire, Thought, Playing

What can you do 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

Yourself, Against, Fair

A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
George Orwell

Him, Situation, Felt

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
George Orwell

Life, Fun, Young

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
George Orwell

Fear, Democracy, Down

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell

Intelligence, Person, Wrong

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 squirting out ink.
George Orwell

Great, Enemy, Long

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

Nothing, May, After

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
George Orwell

Religion, Christian, Socialism

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell

Thought, Language, Corrupt

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

Inside, Stick, Bucket

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
George Orwell

Power, Hunger, Tempered

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
George Orwell

Life, Early, Event

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
George Orwell

Freedom, Two, Else

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
George Orwell

Everyone, Face, Deserves

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

Power, End, Revolution

Four legs good, two legs bad.
George Orwell

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.
George Orwell

Through, Sun, Earth

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
George Orwell

Best, Tell, Books

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.
George Orwell

Food, Long, May

A family with the wrong members in control; that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
George Orwell

Family, Control, Wrong

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
George Orwell

Time, Political, Writing

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Author

Born: June 25, 1903

Died: January 21, 1950

Links

Find on Amazon: George Orwell

Cite this Page: Citation

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