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The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?

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
Objects
Understand
Power
Oppression
Torture
Terrorism
Murder
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And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate.
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I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.
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He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.
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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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Politics is the choice between the lesser of two evils.
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But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet --!
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Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
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Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
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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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... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.
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The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.
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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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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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The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.
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The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else,and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit.
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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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A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.
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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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Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated.
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