Quotes from George Orwell

And if the facts say otherwise, then the facts must be altered.

there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because, being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice.

All he wanted was to get home quickly, and then sit down and be quiet.

From ... the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. ... I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.

Lo importante no es tanto la moral de las masas, cuya actitud resulta irrelevante con tal de que sigan trabajando, sino la moral del propio Partido. Hasta del miembro más humilde se espera que sea competente, trabajador e incluso inteligente dentro de unos límites, pero también es necesario que sea un fanático crédulo e ignorante...

Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally.

in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, the prisoner stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path on the way to the gallows. It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious man. When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive.

I said that we should be all right if we had some cigarettes. I only meant this as a joke; nevertheless half an hour later McNair appeared with two packets of Lucky Strike. He had braved the pitch-dark streets, roamed by Anarchist patrols who had twice stopped him at the pistol's point and examined his papers. I shall not forget this small act of heroism. We were very glad of the cigarettes.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?.... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.

Cada año habrá menos palabras, así el radio de acción de la conciencia será cada vez más pequeño.

Suddenly his heart seemed to turn to ice and his bowels to water.

Debant la douleur, il n'y a pas de héros, aucun héros.

Sahtekarl???n evrensel düzeyde egemen olduÄŸu dönemlerde, gerçeÄŸi söylemek devrimci bir eylemdir.

if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To

His bowels seemed to turn to water.

the only secure basis for oligarchy is collectivism. Wealth

You are thinking.'' he said. ''that my face is old and tired. You are thinking that I talk of power, and yet I am not even able to prevent the decay of my own body. Can you not understand, Winston, that the individual is only a cell? The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.

Blake was not a politician, but there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem like "I wander through each charter'd street" than in three-quarters of Socialist literature.

Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments and vaporisations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future.

And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.

no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 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.

The heresy of heresies was common sense. And