1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

And when memory failed and written records were falsified – when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.

Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution.

Words are such feeble things.

What kind of people would control this world had been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralised government.

If human equality is to be forever averted – if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently – then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

The point is that as soon as fear, hatred, jealousy and power worship are involved, the sense of reality becomes unhinged.

Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important. What counts is that we don’t betray each other.