Quote

The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule , between good and evil but between two evils. You can let the Nazis rule the world : that is evil or you can overthrow them by war , which is also evil. There is no other choice before you, and whichever you choose you will not come out with clean hands.

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
Also
Beings
Human
Choice
Whichever
Humans
Choose
Nazis
Come
Choices
Overthrow
Good
Evil
Evils
World
War
Nazi
Hands
Rule
Two
Clean

More quotes by George Orwell

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The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.
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Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.
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Despotic governments can stand 'moral force' till the cows come home what they fear is physical force.
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Four legs good, two legs bad.
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Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.
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No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.
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Imperialism as he [Kipling] sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising.
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Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
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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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But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
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We may be together for another six months—a year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be?
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It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
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If human equality is to be forever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
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Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox.
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And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.
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Myths which are believed in tend to become true.
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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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... what is peculiar to our own age is the abandonment of the idea that history could be told truthfully.
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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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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.
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