1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

...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.

We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.

He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.

He who controls the past commands the future. He who commands the future conquers the past.

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.

(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

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act