Eric Arthur Blair (1903–50,) known by his pseudonym George Orwell, was a British novelist and essayist who wrote two of the most famous novels of the 20th century, Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949.)
Born in Motihari in colonial India, Orwell, the son of a British colonial civil servant, was educated in England. After graduating from Eton College, Orwell joined the police administration in British India, but resigned to become a writer. In 1928, he moved to Paris and took menial jobs; he described his experiences in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933.)
Orwell was an anarchist in the late 1920s, and a socialist by the 1930s. When he travelled to Spain to fight for the Republicans against General Franco’s Nationalists in 1936, he fled from Soviet-backed communists who were suppressing revolutionary socialist dissenters. The incident turned him into a lifetime anti-Stalinist.
At the onset of World War II, Orwell worked for the BBC on war propaganda, and in 1943, became literary editor of the Tribune, a weekly left-wing magazine. By then, he had established himself as a prolific journalist and wrote articles, reviews, and books.
Orwell’s work is characterized by his concern for social injustice. His most famous works include Animal Farm, a political fable set in a farmyard, but actually a satire on Stalin’s betrayal of the Russian Revolution.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian description of a future state in which every aspect of life is controlled by a totalitarian figure called Big Brother whose central party’s slogans are “War is Peace,” “Freedom is Slavery,” and “Ignorance is Strength.” Originally titled The Last Man in Europe, Nineteen Eighty-Four brought to popular use such phrases as “Big Brother is watching you,” “newspeak,” and “doublethink.”
As he was finishing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell’s health was worsening and he died of tuberculosis in 1950.
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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
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
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
—George Orwell
Topics: Nationality
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past, controls the future.
—George Orwell
Topics: Future
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
—George Orwell
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
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
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
—George Orwell
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
—George Orwell
Topics: Time, The Past, The Present, Past
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
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