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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.

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

— George Orwell

Good

All Quotes by George Orwell

“Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.”

— George Orwell

Age

“No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.”

— George Orwell

Truth

“In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

— George Orwell

Time

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

— George Orwell

Time

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

— George Orwell

Freedom

“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

“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.”

— George Orwell

Future

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

— George Orwell

Future

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

— George Orwell

Men

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

— George Orwell

Equality

“War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”

— George Orwell

War

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”

— George Orwell

History

“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

“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

“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

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

— George Orwell

War

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

— George Orwell

Good

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”

— George Orwell

Good

“There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.”

— George Orwell

War

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

— George Orwell

Intelligence