1,535 Quotes by George Orwell

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle." ― George Orwell: Narrative Essays, Tribune, 22 March 1946.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?.... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.

Y si todos los demás aceptaban la mentira que impuso el partido, si todos los testimonios decían lo mismo, entonces la mentira pasaba a la Historia y se convertía en verdad.

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

But if there was hope, it lay in the proles. You had to cling on to that. When you put it in words it sounded reasonable: it was when you looked at the human beings passing you on the pavement that it became an act of faith.

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed.