G

George Orwell

57 quotes

George Orwell (1903–1950) was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, an English novelist, essayist, and critic best known for the allegorical novella *Animal Farm* and the dystopian novel *Nineteen Eighty-Four*. His clear, direct prose style and fierce opposition to totalitarianism made him one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.

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

— George Orwell

Good

All Quotes by George Orwell

“Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”

— George Orwell

Power

“War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.”

— George Orwell

War

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”

— George Orwell

Jealousy

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

— George Orwell

Power

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

— George Orwell

War

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

— George Orwell

Best

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

— George Orwell

Future

“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

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

— George Orwell

Freedom

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”

— George Orwell

Freedom

“I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.”

— George Orwell

Education

“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”

— George Orwell

War

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

— George Orwell

Future

“Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.”

— George Orwell

Patriotism

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

— George Orwell

Intelligence

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

— George Orwell

Intelligence

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

— George Orwell

Happiness

“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

— George Orwell

War

“Liberal: a power worshipper without power.”

— George Orwell

Power

“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