Quotes from George Orwell

even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp.

Libel settles nothing.

Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Ist ihnen schon mal der Gedanke gekommen', sagte er, 'daß die ganze Entwicklung der englischen Dichtkunst dadurch beeinflußt wurde, dass die englische Sprache nicht genug Reime aufweist?' Nein, dieser Gedanke war Winston wirklich noch nie in den Sinn gekommen. Auch erschien er ihm unter den waltenden Umständen weder sonderlich wichtig noch interessant.

had been equally obvious. The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organisers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists and professional politicians. These people, whose origins

The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction.

Bütün hayvanlar eÅŸittir ama baz?lar? daha eÅŸittir.

A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.

His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt towards an individual than towards an organization.

The moon is beautiful partly because we cannot reach it, (the sea is impressive because one can never be sure of crossing it safely. Even the pleasure one takes in a flower — and this is true even of a botanist who knows all there is to be known about the flower is dependent partly on the sense of mystery.

Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life - the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour.

They would have blown his brain to pieces before they could reclaim it. The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach for ever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom.

Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present one lacks.

accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated...the only victory lay in the far future long after you were dead...

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

I grew up in an atmosphere tinged with militarism, and afterwards I spent five boring years within the sound of bugles. To this day it gives me a faint feeling of sacrilege not to stand to attention during 'God save the King'. That is childish, of course, but I would sooner have had that kind of upbringing than be like the left-wing intellectuals who are so 'enlightened' that they cannot understand the most ordinary emotions.

Hasta que no tengan consciencia de su fuerza, no se rebelarán, y hasta después de haberse rebelado, no serán conscientes. Éste es el problema.

That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and for the bulk of mankind happiness was better.

Pân? nu devin comÈ™tienÈ›i, nu se vor r?zvr?ti È™i pân? nu se r?zvr?tesc, nu pot deveni conÈ™tienÈ›i" - 1984

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

Libertatea este sclavie" "În realitate, nici n-o s? mai existe gândire, în sensul în care o înÈ›elegem noi acum. Ortodoxia înseamn? a nu gândi - a nu avea nevoie s? gândeÈ™ti. Ortodoxia înseamn? lipsa conÈ™tiinÈ›ei.

When finally you surrender to us, it must be of your own free will. We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us: so long as he resists us we never destroy him. We convert him, we capture his inner mind, we reshape him.

If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.