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It reminded us that propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a meaning and a purpose - a political, social and religious purpose - that our aesthetic judgements are always coloured by our prejudices and beliefs

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
Always
Purpose
Judgement
Social
Aesthetic
Art
Propaganda
Political
Beliefs
Judgements
Form
Prejudice
Lurks
Book
Meaning
Coloured
Work
Belief
Prejudices
Every
Religious
Reminded

More quotes by George Orwell

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Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.
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In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
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People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.
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The upper class desire to remain so, the middle class wish to overthrow the upper class, and the lower class want a classless system.
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His answer to every problem, every setback was “I will work harder!” —which he had adopted as his personal motto.
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During five literary generations every enlightened person had despised him, and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there.
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In the face of pain there are no heroes.
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It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.
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In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.
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Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.
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Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
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In moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one's own body.
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It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness. Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals that the party was trying to achieve.
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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.
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Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.
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I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be truthfully written.
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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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The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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In so far as it takes effect at all, pacifist propaganda can only be effective against those countries where a certain amount of freedom of speech is still permitted in other words it is helpful to totalitarianism.
George Orwell
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If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.
George Orwell