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To exchange one orthodoxy for another is not necessarily an advance. The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.

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
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Another
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Mind
Agree
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Records
Agrees
Enemy
Orthodoxy

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If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.
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Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
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Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.
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I am afraid of death. You are young, so presumably you're more afraid of it than I am. Obviously we shall put if off as long as we can. But it makes very little difference. So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.
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Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.
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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.
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Never have ideas about children, and never have ideas for them.
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The artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the magic word Art, and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K. kicking little girls in the head is O.K. even a film like L'Age d'Or is O.K.
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Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
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There is no test of literary merit except survival, which is itself an index to majority opinion.
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If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
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How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?
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He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.
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Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
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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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The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education and fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which is responsible for economic affairs. their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv and Miniplenty
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At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.
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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?
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The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
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