Quotes from George Orwell

Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.

If there is hope, it lies in the proles.

Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope

Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.

Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution

[T]he imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.

There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

Sanity is not statistical.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

We were once told that the aeroplane had "abolished frontiers"; actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable.

Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.

Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.

The way to make a million dollars is to start a religion.

One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up.

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.

I'd like to start a religion. That's where the money is.

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.