Quotes By George Orwell

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.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

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

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

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

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.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.

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.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

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

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

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

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

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

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

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

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

Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

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

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

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

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

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside... there's a thin man inside every fat man.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.