1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

We are the dead' he said.'We are the dead' echoed Julia dutifully.'You are the dead' said an iron voice behind them.

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

It was not desirable for the proles to have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

It was not desirable for the paroles to have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

Don't you enjoy being alive? Don't you like feeling: This is me, this is my hand, this is my leg, I'm real, I'm solid, I'm alive! Don't you like this?

...In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain.

We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.

We sleep soundly in our beds, because rough men stand ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us"Orwell cited Kipling's phrase "making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep" (Kipling, Tommy), and further noted that Kipling's "grasp of function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that men can be highly civilized only while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them." (1942)