Quotes by George Orwell

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

— George Orwell

Happiness

Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

— George Orwell

Freedom

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

— George Orwell

Truth

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.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

— George Orwell

Truth

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Hope

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Life

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Hope

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

— George Orwell

Courage

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.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Success

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

Wisdom

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

Courage

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

— George Orwell

Wisdom

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

— George Orwell

Wisdom

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

— George Orwell

Wisdom