George Orwell Quotes

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.

إدراك المرء لكونه في حالة حرب ومن ثم تتهدده الأخطار يجعل من تسليم كل السلطات لحفنة صغيرة من الناس أمراً طبيعياً وشرطاً محتوماً للبقاء على قيد الحياة.

In my small way I have been fighting for years against the systematic faking of history which now goes on.

وهنا عاد إلى مذكراته ومضى يكتب: لن يثوروا حتى يعوا، ولن يعوا إلا بعد أن يثوروا.

And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.

إن جريمة الفكر لا تفضي إلى الموت إنها الموت نفسه.

إن كان هنالك من أمل، فالأمل يكمن في عامّة الشعب

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realise that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance.

By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

It is just thinkable that books may some day be written by machinery....

We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now.

الحرب هي السلام
العبودية هي الحرية
الجهل هو القوة.