Top 500 George Orwell Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “But it was alright, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

— George Orwell

52. “That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”

— George Orwell

53. “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.”

— George Orwell

54. “This life we live nowadays. It’s not life, it’s stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside them. Sometimes I think we’re all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

— George Orwell

55. “Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.”

— George Orwell

56. “Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me –.”

— George Orwell

57. “There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language.”

— George Orwell

58. “All art is propaganda; on the other hand, not all propaganda is art.”

— George Orwell

59. “Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges.”

— George Orwell

60. “To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.”

— George Orwell

61. “Four legs good, two legs bad.”

— George Orwell

62. “Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”

— George Orwell

63. “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

— George Orwell

64. “Never use a long word where a short one will do.”

— George Orwell

65. “War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”

— George Orwell

66. “Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”

— George Orwell

67. “Right thinking will be rewarded, wrong thinking punished.”

— George Orwell

68. “If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any practical result whatsoever, you’ve beaten them.”

— George Orwell

69. “In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.”

— George Orwell

70. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”

— George Orwell

71. “In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer...”

— George Orwell

72. “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”

— George Orwell

73. “If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

— George Orwell

74. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

— George Orwell

75. “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”

— George Orwell

76. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

— George Orwell

77. “History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

— George Orwell

78. “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

— George Orwell

79. “Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.”

— George Orwell

80. “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

— George Orwell

81. “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

— George Orwell

82. “Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

— George Orwell

83. “At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.”

— George Orwell

84. “My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.”

— George Orwell

85. “It’s frightful that people who are so ignorant have so much influence.”

— George Orwell

86. “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.”

— George Orwell

87. “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”

— George Orwell

88. “It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith – as mysterious as faith itself.”

— George Orwell

89. “The fight against bad English is not frivolous.”

— George Orwell

90. “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.”

— George Orwell

91. “Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”

— George Orwell

92. “In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

— George Orwell

93. “The main motive for nonattachment is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.”

— George Orwell

94. “However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.”

— George Orwell

95. “The secret of a successful restaurant is sharp knives.”

— George Orwell

96. “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”

— George Orwell

97. “Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.”

— George Orwell

98. “And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ’controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

— George Orwell

99. “TRUTH – It’s the New Hate Speech: “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” – George Orwell.”

— George Orwell

100. “High sentiments always win in the end. The leaders who offer blood, toil, tears and sweat always get more out of their followers than those who offer safety and a good time. When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.”

— George Orwell