Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
—George Orwell
Topics: Suffering
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
—George Orwell
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
—George Orwell
Topics: Nationality
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
—George Orwell
Topics: Truth
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
—George Orwell
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie… a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
—George Orwell
Topics: Jokes
Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism — robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.
—George Orwell
Topics: Slavery
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
—George Orwell
Topics: Future
In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
—George Orwell
Topics: Politics
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
—George Orwell
Topics: The Past, Time, Past, The Present
Power is not a means; it is an end….
Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself….
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything…. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends….
We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science…. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always – do not forget this, Winston – always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless….
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
—George Orwell
Topics: The Future
The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.
—George Orwell
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Christopher Hitchens Anglo-American Social Critic
George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) English Novelist
Bertrand A. Russell British Philosopher, Mathematician
Douglas Adams British Author
Maurice Baring British Author
Arthur C. Clarke English Science-fiction Writer
Anthony Burgess English Novelist, Critic
Joseph Conrad Polish-born British Novelist
Stephen Fry English Actor, Writer
Salman Rushdie Indian-born British Novelist