George Orwell quotes - page 22

Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not. (George Orwell)
One feels of him that there was much he did not understand, but not that there was anything that he was frightened of saying or thinking. View quote
George Orwell
Poverty is what I am writing about, and I had my first contact with poverty in this slum. View quote
George Orwell
Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. View quote
George Orwell
When one reads any strongly individual piece of writing, one has the impression of seeing a face somewhere behind the page. It is not necessarily the actual face of the writer. View quote
George Orwell
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. View quote
George Orwell
There were only two things that you were allowed to say, and both of them were palpable lies: as a result, the war produced acres of print but almost nothing worth reading. View quote
George Orwell
I could see even then that the British officials who spoke of him with a mixture of amusement and disapproval also genuinely liked and admired him, after a fashion. Nobody ever suggested that he was corrupt, or ambitious in any vulgar way, or that anything he did was actuated by fear or malice. View quote
George Orwell
In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face, and that fact does not seem to me to have had the discussion it deserves. View quote
George Orwell
If you throw away your weapons, some less scrupulous person will pick them up. If you turn the other cheek, you will get a harder blow on it than you got on the first one. This does not always happen, but it is to be expected, and you ought not to complain if it does happen. View quote
George Orwell
Strictly speaking, as a Nationalist, he was an enemy, but since in every crisis he would exert himself to prevent violence - which, from the British point of view, meant preventing any effective action whatever - he could be regarded as "our man." (George Orwell)
Since 1930 I had seen little evidence that the USSR was progressing towards anything that one could truly call Socialism. On the contrary, I was struck by clear signs of its transformation into a hierarchical society, in which the rulers have no more reason to give up their power than any other ruling class. View quote
George Orwell
I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point. View quote
George Orwell
You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the. View quote
George Orwell
At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. View quote
George Orwell
If you live for others, you must live for others, and not as a roundabout way of getting an advantage for yourself. View quote
George Orwell
It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course - but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. View quote
George Orwell
Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness. View quote
George Orwell
To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like. View quote
George Orwell
In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese. View quote
George Orwell
Between them these two books sum up our present predicament. (George Orwell)
It is difficult for a statesman who still has a political future to reveal everything that he knows. View quote
George Orwell
Beggars do not work, it is said; but then, what is work? View quote
George Orwell
And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money. View quote
George Orwell
Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. View quote
George Orwell