Quotes from George Orwell

And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.

As far as the mass of the people go, the extraordinary swings of opinion which occur nowadays, the emotions which can be turned on and off like a tap, are the result of newspaper and radio hypnosis.

Their job seemed to me so hopeless, so appalling that I wondered how anyone could put up with such a thing when prison was a possible alternative.

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

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

Formar parte de la minoría, aunque fuese una minoría de uno solo, no te convertía en loco. Había la verdad y la mentira, y aferrarse a la verdad, aunque fuese en contra del mundo entero, no era sinónimo de estar loco.

The real reason why I should not like to be in the book trade for life is that while I was in it I lost my love of books. A bookseller has to tell lies about books, and that gives him a distaste for them.

Había la verdad y lo que no era verdad y si una se aferraba a la verdad incluso contra el mundo entero, no estaba uno loco.

the god in men is also the devil the moment it begins to masticate on the morsels of power.

Bukan berarti karena tinggal di jalanan lantas tidak bisa berpikir lebih dari sekedar teh dan dua potong roti.

What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked on as a matter of indifference.

The following are the principal characteristics of nationalist thought: Obsession. As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit.

She had grasped the inner meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was most important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship.

Faith, hope, money - only a saint could have the first two without having the third.

Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting 'Traitor!' and 'Thought-criminal!', the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.

I have managed to make the Capitalist class pay me several pounds a week for writing books against Capitalism.

To be marching up the street behind red flags inscribed with elevating slogans, and then to be bumped off from an upper window by some total stranger with a sub-machine-gun—that is not my idea of a useful way to die.

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrapping of a cigarette packet - everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed - no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

All throughout the Christian ages, and especially since the French Revolution, the Western world has been haunted by the idea of freedom and equality; it is only an idea , but it has penetrated to all ranks of society ... Even the millionaire suffers from a vague sense of guilt, like a dog eating a stolen leg of mutton.

As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength.

But a child's belief in its own shortcomings is not much influenced by facts.

The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously moulding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. Given