Quotes from George Orwell

Never use a long word where a short one will do.

One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.

How can I help seeing what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four." "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.

Quizá no deseara uno tanto ser amado como ser comprendido.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

But the trouble is that conscious futility is something only for the young. One cannot go on despairing of life in to a ripe old age. One cannot go on being decadent, since decadence means falling and one can only said to be falling if one is going to reach the bottom reasonably soon. Sooner or later one is obliged to adopt a positive attitude toward life and society.

The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.

however much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing, as it were, behind your back.

This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against then, and every such phrase anesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.

The [Victory Gin] was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful.

The herrenvolk [master race] are all around you, threading their way on their bicycles between the piles of rubble or rushing off with jugs and buckets to meet the water cart. It is queer to think that these are the people who once ruled Europe, from the Channel to the Caspian Sea and might have conquered our own island, if they had known how weak we were.

Una paz que fuera de verdad permanente sería lo mismo que una guerra permanente. Este es el sentido verdadero de la consigna del Partido: la guerra es la paz.

Fishing is the opposite of war.

Room 101,' he said.

Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs.

Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.

it was an act of self-hypnosis, a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise.

There are people that are convinced of the wickedness both of armies and of police forces, but who are nevertheless much more intolerant and inquisitorial in outlook than the normal person who believes that it is necessary to use your violence in certain circumstances.

Animal Farm is not a book about how pigs—animals—when bestowed with power start to behave like men. It is a book about how men, when given power over other men, start to behave like pigs.

For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.

Few people have the guts to say outright that art and propaganda are the same thing.

Jack London)"He was an adventurer and a man of action as few writers have ever been . . . the excellence of his short stories has been almost forgotten.

Možda ?ovjeku nije toliko do toga da bude voljen,koliko da bude shva?en.