"The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling."
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Quote collection
George Orwell quotes (page 25 of 39)
767 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"The belly comes before the soul."
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"The war is waged against its own subjects and its object is not the victory...but to keep the very structure of society intact."
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"In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave."
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"We of the sinking middle class may sink without further struggles into the working class where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for, after all, we have nothing to lose."
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"The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world."
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"And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate."
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"If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?"
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"War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil."
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"War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent."
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"In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel.:; Up to 1914 you did not need a passport for any country except Russia.:; The European emigrant, if he could scrape together a few pounds for the passage, simply set sail for America or Australia, and when he got there no questions were asked.:; In the eighteenth century it had been quite normal and safe to travel in a country with which your own country was at war."
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"Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi."
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"But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong."
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"The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth."
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"Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble."
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"Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one."
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"Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards."
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"They clichés will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself."
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"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!"
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"I am struck again by the fact that as soon as a working man gets an official post in the Trade Union or goes into Labour politics, he becomes middle-class whether he will or no. ie. by fighting against the bourgeoisie he becomes a bourgeois. The fact is that you cannot help living in the manner appropriate and developing the ideology appropriate to your income."
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