Quotes from George Orwell

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like Negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?

And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality.

He would read King Lear and forget this filthy century.

Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war.

The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a 'real' world where 'real' things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save though out own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.

If there is any hope, it lies in the proles

One thing, I thought as I drove down the hill, I'm finished with this notion of getting back into the past. What's the good of trying to revisit the scenes of your boyhood? They don't exist. Coming up for air! But there isn't any air. The dustbin that we're in reaches up to the stratosphere.

All people who work with their hands are party invisible, and the more important the work they do, the more invisible they are.

Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which

Looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives and humbug generally.

Dickens seems to have succeeded in attacking everybody and antagonizing nobody.

I thought it idiotic that people fighting for their lives should have separate parties

Orang mengorbankan diri mereka demi komunitas fragmentaris – bangsa, ras, keyakinan, kelas – dan baru menyadari bahwa mereka bukan individu ketika mereka disongsong peluru.

Isn't it queer how we go through life, always thinking that the things we want to do are the things that can't be done?

The other farmers sympathised in principle, but they did not at first give him much help. At heart, each of them was secretly wondering whether he could not somehow turn Jones's misfortune to his own advantage.

What writers, artists, scientists and philosophers say today is indicative of future rather than current developments

Dirt is a thing people make too much fuss about.

After all, that is what the merely casual onlooker always sees — the outward appearance, the non-functional, the surfaces of things. No one who is really involved in the landscape ever sees the landscape.

You may not understand this, but I don't think it matters killing people so long as you don't hate them. I also think that there are times when you can only show your feeling of brotherhood for someone else by killing him, or trying to. I believe most ordinary people feel this and would make a peace in that sense if they had any say in the matter. There has been very little popular resistance to this war, and also very little hatred. It is a job that has to be done.

Every intelligent boy of sixteen is a Socialist. At that age one does not see the hook sticking out of the rather stodgy bait.

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun; to-day, to believe that the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic.

You do not escape from money merely by being moneyless