George Orwell
He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.Collection: Writing
It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand.Collection: Hands
Clover was a stout motherly mare approaching middle life, who had never quite got her figure back after her fourth foal.Collection: Foals
Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings, for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.Collection: Heart
Processions, meetings, military parades, lectures, waxwork displays, film shows, telescreen programs all had to be organized; stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumours circulated, photographs faked.Collection: Song
Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it.Collection: People
Surely, comrades, you don't want Jones back?Collection: Want
[T]he outcry against killing women, if you accept killing at all, is sheer sentimentality.:; Why is it worse to kill a woman than a man?Collection: Men
There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.Collection: Loss
Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person.Collection: Doctrine
All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery.Collection: Selfish
Why should be fruit be held inferior to the flower?Collection: Flower
How right the working classes are in their "materialism." How right they are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time!Collection: Wisdom
The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.Collection: Thinking
It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to reveal everything that he knows: and in a profession in which one is a baby at 50 and middle-aged at seventy-five, it is natural that anyone who has not actually been disgraced should feel that he still has a future.Collection: Baby
Comrades," he said, "here is a point that must be settled. The wild creatures, such as rats and rabbits–are they our friends or our enemies? Let us put it to the vote. I propose this question to the meeting: Are rats comrades?" The vote was taken at once, and it was agreed by an overwhelming majority that rats were comrades. There were only four dissentients, the three dogs and the cat, who was afterwards discovered to have voted on both sides.Collection: Dog
Four legs gooood, two legs baaad!Collection: Two
Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.Collection: Disappointment
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.Collection: Imagination
When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.Collection: Book
It’s not so much staying alive, it’s staying human that’s important. What counts is that we don’t betray each other.Collection: Important
Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.Collection: Real
But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.Collection: Struggle
In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer...Collection: Real
Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon – so long as there is no answer to it – gives claws to the weak.Collection: Strong
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.Collection: Real
The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.Collection: Real