Quote

They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening

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
Interested
Deceit
Accepting
Tyrants
Flagrant
Events
Notice
Enormity
Public
Tyranny
Violations
Reality
Happenings
Grasped
Made
Fully
Demanded
Never
Happening
Sufficiently
Accept
Violation

More quotes by George Orwell

Image
If one harbours anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, although in a sense known to be true, are inadmissible.
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
So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.
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
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing and yet is felt to be mystically the same.
George Orwell
Image
Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.
George Orwell
Image
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
George Orwell
Image
The primary aim of modern warfare ... is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.
George Orwell
Image
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
Image
Happiness can exist only in acceptance.
George Orwell
Image
If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
George Orwell
Image
Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.
George Orwell
Image
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.
George Orwell
Image
[A] world in which it is wrong to murder an individual civilian and right to drop a thousand tons of high explosive on a residential area does sometimes make me wonder whether this earth of ours is not a loony bin made use of by some other planet. Not to have a national anthem would be logical.
George Orwell
Image
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.
George Orwell
Image
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell
Image
A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
George Orwell
Image
It was not the man's brain that was speaking it was his larynx.
George Orwell
Image
After 40, a man is responsible for his face.
George Orwell
Image
Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
George Orwell