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Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

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
War Correspondent
Writer
Eric Blair
P. S. Burton
Eric Arthur Blair
John Freeman
Suffering
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A Socialist United States of Europe seems to me the only worth-while political objective today
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War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
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Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home what they fear is physical force.
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If you ask any ordinary reader which of Dickens's proletarian characters he can remember, the three he is almost certain to mention are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller and Mrs. Gamp. A burglar, a valet and a drunken midwife-not exactly a representative cross-section of the English working class.
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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.
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I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY
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It's a wonderful feeling to have a niece like you Because you are always so dear You are so dear no matter the year But all throughout each day of the year There could hardly be a town in the South of England where you could throw a brick without hitting the niece of a bishop.
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The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
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In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
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Rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon - so long as there is no answer to it - gives claws to the weak.
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A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war.
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Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.
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And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.
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If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.
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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.
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Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.
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The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word Art, and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K. kicking little girls in the head is O.K. even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K.
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When I see a policeman with a club beating a man on the ground, I don't have to ask whose side I'm on.
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The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.
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The plant is blind but it knows enough to keep pushing upwards towards the light, and it will continue to do this in the face of endless discouragements.
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