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The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
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
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Opinion Journalist
Poet
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Writer
Eric Blair
P. S. Burton
Eric Arthur Blair
John Freeman
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More quotes by George Orwell
Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.
George Orwell
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
George Orwell
The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.
George Orwell
I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.
George Orwell
Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
George Orwell
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
George Orwell
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must never let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that can be given a name.
George Orwell
Reality is inside the skull.
George Orwell
By the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.
George Orwell
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.
George Orwell
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.
George Orwell
For weeks past he had been making ready for this moment, and it had never crossed his mind that anything would be needed except courage. The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.
George Orwell
I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be determined by the age he lives in ... but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an emotional attitude from which he will never completely escape.
George Orwell
You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.
George Orwell
It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.
George Orwell
Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
George Orwell
they say that time heals all things, they say you can always forget but the smiles and the tears across the years they twist my heart strings yet!
George Orwell
It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.
George Orwell
After 40, a man is responsible for his face.
George Orwell
Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.
George Orwell
