72 Quotes By 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 on age

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
George Orwell on age

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

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.
George Orwell on best

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

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

A family with the wrong members in control that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.
George Orwell on family

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.
George Orwell on fear

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

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell on freedom

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
George Orwell on freedom

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

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

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell on future

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

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
George Orwell on future

He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
George Orwell on god

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell on good

Four legs good, two legs bad.
George Orwell on good

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
George Orwell on good