George Orwell quotes - page 21

To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that. (George Orwell)
Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for. View quote
George Orwell
A joke worth laughing at always has an idea behind it, and usually a subversive idea. Dickens is able to go on being funny because he is in revolt against authority, and authority is always there to be laughed at. View quote
George Orwell
The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin - at any rate not in Spain. View quote
George Orwell
If one keeps these axioms in mind one can generally see the relevant facts in international affairs through the smoke-screen with which the newspapers surround them. View quote
George Orwell
Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger. View quote
George Orwell
Although no doubt he was shrewd enough in detecting dishonesty, he seems wherever possible to have believed that other people were acting in good faith and had a better nature through which they could be approached. View quote
George Orwell
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming strength of patriotism, national loyalty. View quote
George Orwell
The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. View quote
George Orwell
I consider that willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. View quote
George Orwell
Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. (George Orwell)
All in all it is difficult not to feel that pacifism, as it appears among a section of the intelligentsia, is secretly inspired by an admiration for power and successful cruelty. View quote
George Orwell
Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch. View quote
George Orwell
It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands. View quote
George Orwell
By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. View quote
George Orwell
If a man cannot enjoy the return of spring, why should he be happy in a labour-saving Utopia? What will he do with the leisure that the machine will give him? View quote
George Orwell
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable". The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. View quote
George Orwell
As time goes on and the horrors pile up, the mind seems to secrete a sort of self-protecting ignorance which needs a harder and harder shock to pierce it, just as the body will become immunised to a drug and require bigger and bigger doses. View quote
George Orwell
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. View quote
George Orwell
In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law. View quote
George Orwell
The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background. (George Orwell)
By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." View quote
George Orwell
Serenity is impossible to a poor man in a cold country. View quote
George Orwell
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do. View quote
George Orwell
Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not. View quote
George Orwell