1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

It is only when you meet someone of a different culture from yourself that you begin to realise what your own beliefs really are.

Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time. I suppose an hour never passes without your thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn’t merely come back to you, you’re actually IN the past. It was like that at this moment.

If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death?...But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated...'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan,'controls the future:who controls the present controls the past.'...All that was needed was a series of victories over your own memory.

For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the 'natives,' and so in every crisis he has got to do what the 'natives' expect of him... A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things.

For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name.

Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.

WHAT WAS MORE, I ACTUALLY HAD A FEELING THAT THEY WERE AFTER ME ALREADY. THE WHOLE LOT OF THEM! ALL THE PEOPLE WHO COULDN'T UNDERSTAND WHY A MIDDLE-AGED MAN WITH FALSE TEETH SHOULD SNEAK AWAY FOR A QUIET WEEK IN THE PLACE WHERE HE SPENT HIS BOYHOOD. AND ALL THE MEAN-MINDED BASTARDS WHO COULD UNDERSTAND ONLY TOO WELL, AND WHO'D RAISE HEAVEN AND EARTH TO PREVENT IT. THEY WERE ALL ON MY TRACK.