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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.

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
Already
Fooled
Human
April
Humans
Remind
Joke
Aim
Pranks
Jokes
Degraded
Humility
Aggravation
Fool
Degrade

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I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.
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What can the England of 1940 have in common with the England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except that you happen to be the same person.
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The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.
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A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.
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I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.
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England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly.
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The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.
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From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.
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Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
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Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.
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