Quote

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

George Orwell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Flies
Tails
Sooner
Given
Keep
Would
Tail

More quotes by George Orwell

Image
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.
George Orwell
Image
When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
George Orwell
Image
So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.
George Orwell
Image
The hospital is the antechamber to the tomb
George Orwell
Image
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell
Image
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
George Orwell
Image
I always disagree, however, when people end up saying that we can only combat Communism, Fascism or what not if we develop an equal fanaticism. It appears to me that one defeats the fanatic precisely by not being a fanatic oneself, but on the contrary by using one's intelligence.
George Orwell
Image
The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.
George Orwell
Image
All men are enemies. All animals are comrades
George Orwell
Image
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
George Orwell
Image
My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.
George Orwell
Image
Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.
George Orwell
Image
How could you communicate with the future? It was impossible. Either the future would resemble the present in which case it would not listen to him, or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.
George Orwell
Image
It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought...should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
George Orwell
Image
We were once told that the aeroplane had abolished frontiers actually it is only since the aeroplane became a serious weapon that frontiers have become definitely impassable.
George Orwell
Image
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
George Orwell
Image
The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.
George Orwell
Image
To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
George Orwell
Image
I did try very hard to tell the whole truth without violating my literary instincts.
George Orwell
Image
It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
George Orwell