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All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

George Orwell

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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
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Writer
Eric Blair
P. S. Burton
Eric Arthur Blair
John Freeman
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He thought with a kind of astonishment of the biological uselessness of pain and fear, the treachery of the human body which always freezes into inertia at exactly the moment when a special effort is needed.
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Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.
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It is brought home to you...that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior.
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All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.
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Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
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Take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another.
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It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.
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All through my boyhood I had a profound conviction that I was no good, that I was wasting my time, wrecking my talents, behaving with monstrous folly and wickedness and ingratitude-and all this, it seemed, was inescapable, because I lived among laws which were absolute, like the law of gravity, but which it was not possible for me to keep.
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The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.
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He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.
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Public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.
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