1903-1950, British Author, ''Animal Farm''
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell – [Jokes and Jokers]
A liberal is a power worshipper without the power.
George Orwell – [Liberals]
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
George Orwell – [Tragedies]
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell – [Equality]
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.
George Orwell – [Writers and Writing]
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for socialism is its adherents.
George Orwell – [Communism and Socialism]
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
George Orwell – [Autobiography]
But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.
George Orwell – [Spirit and Spirituality]
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell – [Contradiction]
Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
George Orwell – [Newspapers]
Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.
George Orwell – [Responsibility]
For a creative writer possession of the ''truth'' is less important than emotional sincerity.
George Orwell – [Writers and Writing]
For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.
George Orwell – [Acceptance]
Four legs good, two legs bad.
George Orwell – [Animals]
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
George Orwell – [Freedom]
Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own orthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
George Orwell – [Writers and Writing]
He is a man of thirty-five, but looks fifty. He is bald, has varicose veins and wears spectacles, or would wear them if his only pair were not chronically lost. If things are normal with him, he will be suffering from malnutrition, but if he has recently had a lucky streak, he will be suffering from a hangover. At present it is half past eleven in the morning, and according to his schedule he should have started work two hours ago; but even if he had made any serious effort to start he would have been frustrated by the almost continuous ringing of the telephone bell, the yells of the baby, the rattle of an electric drill out in the street, and the heavy boots of his creditors clumping up the stairs. The most recent interruption was the arrival of the second post, which brought him two circulars and an income tax demand printed in red. Needless to say this person is a writer.
George Orwell – [Writers and Writing]
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).
George Orwell – [Atheism]
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
George Orwell – [Freedom]
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics –a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage –surely that proves that you are in the right?
George Orwell – [Creeds]