Quote

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question.

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
Thinking
Question
People
Moment
Given
Moments
Body
Orthodoxy
Ideas
Assumed
Without
Accept
Right
Accepting

More quotes by George Orwell

Image
The war is waged against its own subjects and its object is not the victory...but to keep the very structure of society intact.
George Orwell
Image
The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.
George Orwell
Image
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
George Orwell
Image
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
Image
The cheaper books become, the less money is spent on books.
George Orwell
Image
From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned.
George Orwell
Image
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.
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
The Puritanical nonsense of excluding children and therefore to some extent women from pubs has turned these places into mere boozing shops instead of the family gathering places that they ought to be.
George Orwell
Image
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
George Orwell
Image
Politics is the choice between the lesser of two evils.
George Orwell
Image
Why should be fruit be held inferior to the flower?
George Orwell
Image
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell
Image
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
George Orwell
Image
Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively civilised weapon. 'Normal' or 'legitimate' warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously so of human lives.
George Orwell
Image
The weariness of the cell is the vigour of the organism.
George Orwell
Image
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If it seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin.
George Orwell
Image
... 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.
George Orwell
Image
The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
George Orwell
Image
You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.
George Orwell