George Orwell quotes - page 3

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. (George Orwell)
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. View quote
George Orwell
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. View quote
George Orwell
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. View quote
George Orwell
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return. View quote
George Orwell
Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism. View quote
George Orwell
A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion. View quote
George Orwell
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. View quote
George Orwell
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. View quote
George Orwell
Four legs good, two legs bad. View quote
George Orwell
Power is not a means; it is an end. (George Orwell)
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. View quote
George Orwell
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent. View quote
George Orwell
The end was contained in the beginning. View quote
George Orwell
To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others. View quote
George Orwell
War is war. The only good human being is a dead one. View quote
George Orwell
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. View quote
George Orwell
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. View quote
George Orwell
The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes. View quote
George Orwell
Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal. View quote
George Orwell
We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases. (George Orwell)
No one I met at this time -- doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients -- failed to assure me that a man who is hit through the neck and survives it is the luckiest creature alive. I could not help thinking that it would be even luckier not to be hit at all. View quote
George Orwell
The past is a curious thing. It's with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it's got no reality, it's just a set of facts that you've learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn't merely come back to you, you're actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment. View quote
George Orwell
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals. View quote
George Orwell
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. View quote
George Orwell