Quotes By George Orwell

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

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

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

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

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

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.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.