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I do not wish to comment on the work if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

George Orwell

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George Orwell
Age: 46 †
Born: 1903
Born: June 25
Died: 1950
Died: January 21
Autobiographer
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Essayist
Journalist
Literary Critic
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Opinion Journalist
Poet
Screenwriter
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Eric Blair
P. S. Burton
Eric Arthur Blair
John Freeman
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And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?
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It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand.
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You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity.
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If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
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... ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance... 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.
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Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.
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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.
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The major problem of our time is the decay in the belief in personal immortality, and it cannot be dealt with while the average human being is either drudging like an ox or shivering in fear of the secret police... How right [the working classes] are to realize that the belly comes before the soul, not in the scale of values but in point of time!
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Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.
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When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
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Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
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Imperialism as he [Kipling] sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising.
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I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY
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Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
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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.
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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.
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The primary aim of modern warfare ... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
George Orwell
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The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.
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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
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What is not hereditary cannot be permanent.
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