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
keeping-secrets kept-secrets want
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
names secret shapes
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.
mistake past secret
The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.
years work-out secret
What was happening was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the second had been the opening of the diary. He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions. The last step was something that would happen in the Ministry of Love. He had accepted it. The end was contained in the beginning.
real secret should
. . . it is a corrupting thing to live one's real life in secret. One should live with the stream of life, not against it.
act becomes telling truth universal
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act
becomes draw fact forget necessary needed oblivion
(Doublethink) to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed
abolish aim change conscious create crushed daily drudgery high lives low men middle outside places remain shall society
The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittenly conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
giving minorities politics
...in the negative part of Professor's Hayek's thesis there is a great deal of truth. It cannot be said too often - at any rate, it is not being said nearly often enough - that collectivism is not inherently democratic, but, on the contrary, gives to a tyrannical minority such powers as the Spanish Inquisitors never dreamt of.
reality skulls mind
We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.
beds men night ready rough safe stand visit
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
men
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
establish power safeguard
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.
people
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.