Top 500 George Orwell Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “You must be an intellectual. A normal person would never believe a thing like that.”

— George Orwell

252. “But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed.”

— George Orwell

253. “No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.”

— George Orwell

254. “It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.”

— George Orwell

255. “One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

— George Orwell

256. “In my opinion nothing has contributed more to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country.”

— George Orwell

257. “The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.”

— George Orwell

258. “Reality is inside the skull.”

— George Orwell

259. “One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing.”

— George Orwell

260. “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

— George Orwell

261. “Liberal: a power worshipper without power.”

— George Orwell

262. “All nationalistic distinctions – all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect – are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them.”

— George Orwell

263. “The tendency of advanced capitalism has been to enlarge the middle class and not to wipe it out, as it once seemed likely to do.”

— George Orwell

264. “What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.”

— George Orwell

265. “Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is WORK? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course – but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless.”

— George Orwell

266. “Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.”

— George Orwell

267. “Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.”

— George Orwell

268. “No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.”

— George Orwell

269. “It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith-as mysterious as faith itself. Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in logic; it is a change in the climate of the mind.”

— George Orwell

270. “Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”

— George Orwell

271. “Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!” It went on for five minutes without stopping. And by the time the sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse.”

— George Orwell

272. “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”

— George Orwell

273. “What kind of people would control this world 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 lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world of monopoly industry and centralised government.”

— George Orwell

274. “Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn’t do the hangman’s job.”

— George Orwell

275. “Perhaps “friend” was not exactly the right word. You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades; but there were some comrades whose society was pleasanter than that of others.”

— George Orwell

276. “All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.”

— George Orwell

277. “Even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold.”

— George Orwell

278. “The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell, 1984.”

— George Orwell

279. “There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree.”

— George Orwell

280. “Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

— George Orwell

281. “By using stale metaphors, similes and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself.”

— George Orwell

282. “Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.”

— George Orwell

283. “The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.”

— George Orwell

284. “There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

— George Orwell

285. “How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.”

— George Orwell

286. “A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

— George Orwell

287. “The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.”

— George Orwell

288. “The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak.”

— George Orwell

289. “So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”

— George Orwell

290. “The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

— George Orwell

291. “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. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order.”

— George Orwell

292. “The Communism of the English intellectual is something explicable enough. It is the patriotism of the deracinated.”

— George Orwell

293. “Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.”

— George Orwell

294. “The result of preaching totalitarian doctrines is to weaken the instinct by means of which free peoples know what is or is not dangerous.”

— George Orwell

295. “The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.”

— George Orwell

296. “The end was contained in the beginning.”

— George Orwell

297. “And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty.”

— George Orwell

298. “Tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country.”

— George Orwell

299. “Animal Farm is a warning to every reader. Beware the utopia; beware the perfect solution and the easy slogan; beware those who claim to know what is best for you; beware bombast and dogma; beware the death of doubt; beware those who do not practice what they preach. Beware the chosen. Beware the one and only true path.”

— George Orwell

300. “The Party is not interested in the overt act. The thought is all we care about.”

— George Orwell