1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.

... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

He had moved from thought to words, and now from words to actions.

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.

A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.

The main motive for ''nonattachment'' is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.

One's got to change the system, or one changes nothing.

The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.