In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
George Orwell
Many people genuinely do not wish to be saints, and it is possible that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never had much temptation to be human beings.
George Orwell
The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power.
George Orwell
Every 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
Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
George Orwell
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
George Orwell
The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
George Orwell
I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.
George Orwell
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour.
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 the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time.
George Orwell
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
George Orwell
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
George Orwell
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 that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way.
George Orwell
To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.
George Orwell
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?
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.
George Orwell
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
George Orwell
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
George Orwell
