"The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past."
Read quote
3 likes
Quote collection
George Orwell quotes (page 38 of 39)
767 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right."
Read quote
3 likes
"Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?"
Read quote
3 likes
"If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class."
Read quote
3 likes
"No one, at any rate no English writer, has written better about childhood than Dickens. In spite of all the knowledge that has accumulated since, in spite of the fact that children are now comparatively sanely treated, no novelist has shown the same power of entering into the child's point of view."
Read quote
3 likes
"Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other."
Read quote
3 likes
"Never, for any reason on earth, could you wish for an increase in pain. Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop."
Read quote
3 likes
"For after all, what is there behind, except money? Money for the right kind of education, money for influential friends, money for leisure and peace of mind, money for trips to Italy. Money writes books, money sells them. Give me not righteousness, O lord, give me money, only money."
Read quote
3 likes
"So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes
"On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran."
Read quote
3 likes
"Do you know why you’re here? Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you.To make you sane."
Read quote
3 likes
"It was soon noticed that when ever there was work to be done the cat could never be found."
Read quote
3 likes
"The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail."
Read quote
3 likes
"The human beings did not hate Animal Farm any less now that it was prospering; indeed, they hated it more than ever."
Read quote
3 likes
"Winston could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war...war had literally been continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil."
Read quote
3 likes
"The organizing principal for any culture is War."
Read quote
3 likes
"And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots."
Read quote
3 likes
"It [England] 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."
Read quote
3 likes
"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."
Read quote
3 likes