Quotes By George Orwell

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

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.

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

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

Serious sport 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.

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

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

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.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

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.

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.

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

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.