Quotes by George Orwell

About George Orwell:

Eric Arthur Blair is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Big Brother is watching you.

George Orwell

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

George Orwell

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

George Orwell

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

Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.

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

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

George Orwell

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

George Orwell

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

George Orwell

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

George Orwell

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

George Orwell

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

George Orwell

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

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

George Orwell

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

George Orwell

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

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

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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

Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.

George Orwell

Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.

George Orwell

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge Orwell
  • DescriptionEnglish author and journalist
  • AliasesEric Arthur Blair; Eric Blair; John Freeman
  • BornJune 25, 1903
  • DiedJanuary 21, 1950
  • CountryUnited Kingdom
  • ProfessionWar Correspondent; Poet; Essayist; Journalist; Novelist; Literary Critic; Autobiographer; Bookseller
  • WorksThe Road To Wigan Pier; Homage To Catalonia; Animal Farm; Nineteen Eighty-Four; Burmese Days; Coming Up For Air; Keep The Aspidistra Flying; A Clergyman's Daughter; Down And Out In Paris And London; Politics And The English Language; The Lion And The Unicorn: Socialism And The English Genius; Why I Write
  • AwardsPrometheus Award - Hall Of Fame