George Orwell
1984, Animal Farm, champion of political clarity
Most quoted
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
— from Animal Farm, 1945
"Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
— from Politics and the English Language, 1946
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
— from Politics and the English Language, 1946
All quotes by George Orwell (198)
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection, that one is prepared to muddle along, to be imperfect and yet to remain sane.
The only way to keep a secret is to never have it.
The truest emotion is the one that is not expressed.
Big Brother is watching you.
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.
All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal.
I hate the idea of causing fear. It is the knowledge that one is feared that gives one power.
Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms.
Contemporaries of George Orwell
Other Literatures born within 50 years of George Orwell (1903–1950).