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Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing.

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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Prevailing
Atheism
Effectiveness
Challenges
Genuinely
Opinion
Surprising
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Anyone
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Unfashionable
Fear
Fairs
Silenced
Given
Fair
Orthodoxy

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I do not wish to comment on the work if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.
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The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. That rifle, hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or laborer's cottage, is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
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As a rule they will refuse even to sample a foreign dish, they regard such things as garlic and olive oil with disgust, life is unliveable to them unless they have tea and puddings.
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The belly comes before the soul.
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Even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold.
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Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist? O'Brien: Of course he exists. Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me? O'Brien: You do not exist.
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For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.
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As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
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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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You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one.
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The object of power is power.
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Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
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One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death.
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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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It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.
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Power is not a means it is an end.
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A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, but then fail all the more completely because he drinks.
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Good novels are not written by orthodoxy-sniffers, nor by people who are conscience-stricken about their own unorthodoxy. Good novels are written by people who are not frightened.
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The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink
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Good writing is like a windowpane.
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