Quote

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

George Orwell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Orwell
Age: 46 †
Born: 1903
Born: June 25
Died: 1950
Died: January 21
Autobiographer
Bookseller
Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Opinion Journalist
Poet
Screenwriter
War Correspondent
Writer
Eric Blair
P. S. Burton
Eric Arthur Blair
John Freeman
Men
Thrive
Depth
Obvious
Intelligence
Intelligent
Duty
Firsts
First
Sunk

More quotes by George Orwell

Image
It was not the man's brain that was speaking it was his larynx.
George Orwell
Image
Man is the only creature that consumes without producing
George Orwell
Image
If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.
George Orwell
Image
The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.
George Orwell
Image
One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.
George Orwell
Image
. . . it is a corrupting thing to live one's real life in secret. One should live with the stream of life, not against it.
George Orwell
Image
The result of this is that so-called peace propaganda is just as dishonest and intellectually disgusting as war propaganda. Like war propaganda, it concentrates on putting forward a ‘case’, obscuring the opponent’s point of view and avoiding awkward questions.
George Orwell
Image
Writing a novel is agony.
George Orwell
Image
There is a geographical element in all belief-saying what seem profound truths in India have a way of seeming enormous platitudes in England, and vice versa . Perhaps the fundamental difference is that beneath a tropical sun individuality seems less distinct and the loss of it less important.
George Orwell
Image
He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.
George Orwell
Image
Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
George Orwell
Image
Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.
George Orwell
Image
Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.
George Orwell
Image
Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively civilised weapon. 'Normal' or 'legitimate' warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously so of human lives.
George Orwell
Image
The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.
George Orwell
Image
Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.
George Orwell
Image
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
George Orwell
Image
A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.
George Orwell
Image
They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening
George Orwell
Image
[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.
George Orwell