Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The ruling power is always faced with the question, ‘In such and such circumstances, what would you do?’, whereas the opposition is not obliged to take responsibility or make any real decisions.
George Orwell
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Would
Question
Decision
Obliged
Responsibility
Ruling
Power
Faced
Take
Whereas
Real
Opposition
Make
Decisions
Always
Circumstances
More quotes by George Orwell
Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.
George Orwell
They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself
George Orwell
Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.
George Orwell
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell
You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.
George Orwell
The machine has got to be accepted, but it is probably better to accept it rather as one accepts a drug - that is, grudgingly and suspiciously. Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous, and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes.
George Orwell
My best fishing-memory is about some fish that I never caught.
George Orwell
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.
George Orwell
It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.
George Orwell
The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.
George Orwell
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
George Orwell
For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.
George Orwell
Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.
George Orwell
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
George Orwell
Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution
George Orwell
The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. ... War is Peace.
George Orwell
If human equality is to be forever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
George Orwell
Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
George Orwell
Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.
George Orwell
