George Orwell quotes - page 2

Happiness can exist only in acceptance. (George Orwell)
Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice. View quote
George Orwell
One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up. View quote
George Orwell
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. View quote
George Orwell
Liberal: a power worshipper without power. View quote
George Orwell
Myths which are believed in tend to become true. View quote
George Orwell
He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him. View quote
George Orwell
All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. View quote
George Orwell
No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy. View quote
George Orwell
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him. View quote
George Orwell
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be. (George Orwell)
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. View quote
George Orwell
Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing. View quote
George Orwell
The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded. View quote
George Orwell
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. View quote
George Orwell
Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. View quote
George Orwell
There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. View quote
George Orwell
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. View quote
George Orwell
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle. View quote
George Orwell
To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself. View quote
George Orwell
I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY. (George Orwell)
So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot. View quote
George Orwell
What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy? View quote
George Orwell
A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. View quote
George Orwell
We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. View quote
George Orwell