George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, who used the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 June 1903
CityMotihari, India
life happiness truth
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
views age world
All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.
pain effort special
He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.
war fighting soldier
It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.
faith believe reality
The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
time writing political-language
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
book facts praise
The fact is that certain themes cannot be celebrated in words, and tyranny is one of them. No one ever wrote a good book in praise of the Inquisition.
doe nineteen 1984-important
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.
revolutionary fascists militia
When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.
animal half tyranny
This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.
real anvils hammers
In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer...
children beer gathering
The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.
war dirty fighting
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 'abjure' violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.
judging atheism literature
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.