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.
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When I worked in a second-hand bookshop — so easily pictured, if you don't work in one, as a kind of paradise where charming old gentlemen browse eternally among calf-bound folios — the thing that chiefly struck me was the rarity of really bookis...

George Orwell

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politic...

George Orwell

The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.

George Orwell

A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set us a schizophrenic system of thought, in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded by the politic...

George Orwell

An earthquake is such fun when it is over.

George Orwell

A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.

George Orwell

[Football] 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

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

George Orwell

Well, Hilda and I were married, and right from the start it was a flop. Why did you marry her? you say. Why did you marry yours? These things happen to us. I wonder whether you'll believe that during the first two or three years I had serious thought...

George Orwell

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve ...

George Orwell

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

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

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

George Orwell

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

George Orwell

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

George Orwell

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

George Orwell

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

George Orwell

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

George Orwell

She's beautiful,' he murmured. 'She's a metre across the hips, easily,' said Julia. 'That is her style of beauty,' said Winston.

George Orwell

That is her style of beauty.

George Orwell

Beyond the late Fifties everything faded. When there were no external records that you could refer to, even the outline of your own life lost its sharpness. You remembered huge events which had quite probably not happened, you remembered the details ...

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