Quote

I understand HOW. I do not understand WHY

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
Understand

More quotes by George Orwell

Image
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
George Orwell
Image
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?
George Orwell
Image
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
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
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.
George Orwell
Image
The end was contained in the beginning.
George Orwell
Image
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.
George Orwell
Image
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
George Orwell
Image
Four legs good, two legs bad.
George Orwell
Image
It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important. What counts is that we don't betray each other.
George Orwell
Image
Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.
George Orwell
Image
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
Image
Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books, one does not discover how bad the majority of them are.
George Orwell
Image
The belly comes before the soul.
George Orwell
Image
Manchester is the belly and guts of the nation
George Orwell
Image
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
George Orwell
Image
Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution
George Orwell
Image
For the future. For the unborn.
George Orwell
Image
One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death.
George Orwell
Image
Totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere.
George Orwell