If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell

Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.
George Orwell

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
George Orwell

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

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
George Orwell

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

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.
George Orwell

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.
George Orwell

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.
George Orwell

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
George Orwell

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
P. J. O'Rourke

The biggest human temptation is to settle for too little.
Thomas Merton

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.
Plutarch

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.
Blaise Pascal

All human evil comes from a single cause, man's inability to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal

Faith is different from proof; the latter is human, the former is a Gift from God.
Blaise Pascal

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man's being unable to sit still in a room.
Blaise Pascal

There is an electric fire in human nature tending to purify - so that among these human creatures there is continually some birth of new heroism. The pity is that we must wonder at it, as we should at finding a pearl in rubbish.
John Keats

Scenery is fine - but human nature is finer.
John Keats