1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

TRUTH – It’s the New Hate Speech: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” – George Orwell.

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

Ignorance and prejudice are the ballast of our ship of state – however, ships without ballast are not seaworthy and cannot sail in the tempests, nor reach a safe harbor.

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was that he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.

In Newspeak there is no word for ‘Science’. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.

It was not the man’s brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.

Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.