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I Have No Wish To Take Life, Not Even Human Life
-George Orwell
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I Have No Wish

George Orwell
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I Have No Wish To Take Life, Not Even Human Life

Understanding the Quote: "i have no wish to take life, not even human life..."

This quote by George Orwell reflects deeply on the theme of wish. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Wish, Human Life, Humans, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how George Orwell interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About George Orwell

George Orwell is celebrated for insightful thoughts on wish and human life. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Wish
Human Life
Humans
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Huge Events Like The Ukraine Famine Of 1933, Involving The Deaths Of Millions Of People, Have Actually Escaped The Attention Of The Majority Of English Russophiles.
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In Some Ways She Was Far More Acute Than Winston, And Far Less Susceptible To Party Propaganda. Once When He Happened In Some Connection To Mention The War Against Eurasia, She Startled Him By Saying Casually That In Her Opinion The War Was Not Happening. The Rocket Bombs Which Fell Daily On London Were Probably Fired By The Government Of Oceania Itself, "just To Keep The People Frightened."
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Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.
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He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother
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In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy But Always Against One's Own Body.
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As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.
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There Will Be No Curiosity, No Enjoyment Of The Process Of Life. All Competing Pleasures Will Be Destroyed. But Always— Do Not Forget This, Winston— Always There Will Be The Intoxication Of Power, Constantly Increasing And Constantly Growing Subtler. Always, At Every Moment, There Will Be The Thrill Of Victory, The Sensation Of Trampling On An Enemy Who Is Helpless. If You Want A Picture Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face— Forever.
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Most Revolutionaries Are Potential Tories, Because They Imagine That Everything Can Be Put Right By Altering The Shape Of Society; Once That Change Is Effected, As It Sometimes Is, They See No Need For Any Other.
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Needs
I Managed To Get My Copy Of Ulysses Through Safely This Time. I Rather Wish I Had Never Read It. It Gives Me An Inferiority Complex. When I Read A Book Like That And Then Come Back To My Own Work, I Feel Like A Eunuch Who Has Taken A Course In Voice Production.
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From Where Winston Stood It Was Just Possible To Read, Picked Out On Its White Face In Elegant Lettering, The Three Slogans Of The Party: War Is Peace Freedom Is Slavery Ignorance Is Strength.
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All Nationalistic Distinctions - All Claims To Be Better Than Somebody Else Because You Have A Different-shaped Skull Or Speak A Different Dialect - Are Entirely Spurious, But They Are Important So Long As People Believe In Them.
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Sometimes They Threaten You With Something - Something You Can't Stand Up To, Can't Even Think About. And Then You Say, Don't Do It To Me, Do It To Somebody Else, Do It To So-and-so. And Perhaps You Might Pretend, Afterwards, That It Was Only A Trick And That You Just Said It To Make Them Stop And Didn't Mean It. But That Isn't True. At The Time When It Happens You Do Mean It. You Think There's No Other Way Of Saving Yourself, And You're Quite Ready To Save Yourself That Way. You Want It To Happen To The Other Person. You Don't Give A Damn What They Suffer. All You Care Is Yourself.
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The Major Problem Of Our Time Is The Decay In The Belief In Personal Immortality, And It Cannot Be Dealt With While The Average Human Being Is Either Drudging Like An Ox Or Shivering In Fear Of The Secret Police... How Right [the Working Classes] Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!
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Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.
Winning
Achievement
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The Mute Protest In Your Own Bones
Bones
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If He Were Allowed Contact With Foreigners He Would Discover That They Are Creatures Similar To Himself And That Most Of What He Has Been Told About Them Is Lies. The Sealed World In Which He Lives Would Be Broken, And The Fear, Hatred And Self-righteousness On Which His Morale Depends Might Evaporate.
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In Any Form Of Art Designed To Appeal To Large Numbers Of People,...[t]he Rich Man Is Usually 'bad', And His Machinations Are Invariably Frustrated.:; 'good Poor Man Defeats Bad Rich Man' Is An Accepted Formula.
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He Drove His Mind Into The Abyss Where Poetry Is Written.
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In This Country, Intellectual Cowardice Is The Worst Enemy A Writer Or Journalist Has To Face ... Unpopular Ideas Can Be Silenced, And Incovenient Facts Kept Dark, Without The Need For Any Official Ban ... At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Iedas Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question.
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The Life Of An Animal Is Misery And Slavery: That Is The Plain Truth.
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From The Proletarians Nothing Is To Be Feared. Left To Themselves, They Will Continue From Generation To Generation And From Century To Century, Working, Breeding, And Dying, Not Only Without Any Impulse To Rebel, But Without The Power Of Grasping That The World Could Be Other Than It Is.
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Napoleon Is Always Right.
Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache. They Wanted To Produce A Perfect Society By An Endless Continuation Of Something That Had Only Been Valuable Because It Was Temporary. The Wider Course Would Be To Say That There Are Certain Lines Along Which Humanity Must Move, The Grand Strategy Is Mapped Out, But Detailed Prophecy Is Not Our Business. Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.
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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.
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"a Minority Of One"... The Definition Of Insanity.
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The Educated Man Pictures A Horde Of Submen, Wanting Only A Day's Liberty To Loot His House, Burn His Books, And Set Him To Work Minding A Machine Or Sweeping Out A Lavatory. 'anything,' He Thinks, 'any Injustice, Sooner Than Let That Mob Loose.' He Does Not See That Since There Is No Difference Between The Mass Of Rich And Poor, There Is No Question Of Setting The Mob Loose. The Mob Is In Fact Loose Now, And--in The Shape Of Rich Men--is Using Its Power To Set Up Enormous Treadmills Of Boredom, Such As 'smart' Hotels.
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Gordon Eyed Them With Inert Hatred. At This Moment He Hated All Books, And Novels Most Of All. Horrible To Think Of All That Soggy, Half-baked Trash Massed Together In One Place.
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Thinking
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The Whole Experience Of Being Hit By A Bullet Is Very Interesting And I Think Worth Describing In Detail.
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I Hate Purity, I Hate Goodness! I Don't Want Virtue To Exist Anywhere. I Want Everyone To Be Corrupt To The Bones.
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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. When Human Beings Are Governed By "thou Shalt Not", The Individual Can Practise A Certain Amount Of Eccentricity: When They Are Supposedly Governed By "love" Or "reason", He Is Under Continuous Pressure To Make Him Behave And Think In Exactly The Same Way As Everyone Else.
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Processions, Meetings, Military Parades, Lectures, Waxwork Displays, Film Shows, Telescreen Programs All Had To Be Organized; Stands Had To Be Erected, Effigies Built, Slogans Coined, Songs Written, Rumours Circulated, Photographs Faked.
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It [england] Is A Family In Which The Young Are Generally Thwarted And Most Of The Power Is In The Hands Of Irresponsible Uncles And Bedridden Aunts.
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There Are Books That One Reads Over And Over Again, Books That Become Part Of The Furniture Of One's Mind And Alter One's Whole Attitude To Life, Books That One Dips Into But Never Reads Through, Books That One Reads At A Single Sitting And Forgets A Week Later.
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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.
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[...] You Can Get Anything In This World If You Genuinely Don't Want It.
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Take Away Freedom Of Speech, And The Creative Faculties Dry Up.
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All Through My Boyhood I Had A Profound Conviction That I Was No Good, That I Was Wasting My Time, Wrecking My Talents, Behaving With Monstrous Folly And Wickedness And Ingratitude-and All This, It Seemed, Was Inescapable, Because I Lived Among Laws Which Were Absolute, Like The Law Of Gravity, But Which It Was Not Possible For Me To Keep.
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All Writers Are Vain, Selfish And Lazy, And At The Very Bottom Of Their Motives Lies A Mystery.
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Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.
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Objective Considerations Of Contemporary Phenomena Compel The Conclusion That Success Or Failure In Competitive Activities Exhibits No Tendency To Be Commensurate With Innate Capacity, But That A Considerable Element Of The Unpredictable Must Invaria.
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The Existence Of Good Bad Literature—the Fact That One Can Be Amused Or Excited Or Even Moved By A Book That One's Intellect Simply Refuses To Take Seriously—is A Reminder That Art Is Not The Same Thing As Cerebration.
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If Publishers And Editors Exert Themselves To Keep Certain Topics Out Of Print, It Is Not Because They Are Frightened Of Prosecution But Because They Are Frightened Of Public Opinion. 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.
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Never Use A Foreign Phrase, A Scientific Word, Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent.
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The Inflated Style Is Itself A Kind Of Euphemism. A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outlines And Covering Up All The Details. The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity.
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The Atom Bombs Are Piling Up In The Factories, The Police Are Prowling Through The Cities, The Lies Are Streaming From The Loudspeakers, But The Earth Is Still Going Round The Sun.
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During Part Of 1941 And 1942, When The Luftwaffe Was Busy In Russia, The German Radio Regaled Its Home Audience With Stories Of Devastating Air Raids On London. Now, We Are Aware That Those Raids Did Not Happen. But What Use Would Our Knowledge Be If The Germans Conquered Britain? For The Purpose Of A Future Historian, Did Those Raids Happen, Or Didn't They? The Answer Is: If Hitler Survives, They Happened, And If He Falls They Didn't Happen.
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It Is Curious How People Take It For Granted That They Have A Right To Preach At You And Pray Over You As Soon As Your Income Falls Below A Certain Level.
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Progress And Reaction Have Both Turned Out To Be Swindles. Seemingly, There Is Nothing Left But Quietism - Robbing Reality Of Its Terrors By Simply Submitting To It.
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News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.
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Want
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The Aim Of A Joke Is Not To Degrade The Human Being, But To Remind Him That He Is Already Degraded.
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Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Unorthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.
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The Ruling Power Is Always Faced With The Question, ‘in Such And Such Circumstances, What Would You Do?’, Whereas The Opposition Is Not Obliged To Take Responsibility Or Make Any Real Decisions.
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I Always Disagree, However, When People End Up Saying That We Can Only Combat Communism, Fascism Or What Not If We Develop An Equal Fanaticism. It Appears To Me That One Defeats The Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.
People
Defeat
Communism
Every Line Of Serious Work That I Have Written Since 1936 Has Been Written, Directly Or Indirectly Against Totalitarianism And For Democratic Socialism As I Understand It.
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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.
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This Life We Live Nowadays. It's Not Life, It's Stagnation Death-in-life. Look At All These Bloody Houses And The Meaningless People Inside Them. Sometimes I Think We're All Corpses. Just Rotting Upright.
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People
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It Is One Of The Tragedies Of The Half-educated That They Develop Late, When They Are Already Committed To Some Wrong Way Of Life.
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All That Was Required Of Them (i.e. The Brain-washed Masses) Was A Primitive Patriotism Which Could Be Appealed To Whenever It Was Necessary To Make Them Accept Longer Working Hours Or Shorter Rations. And Even When They Became Discontented, As They Sometimes Did, Their Discontent Led Nowhere, Because, Being Without General Ideas, They Could Only Focus It On Petty Specific Grievances. The Larger Evils Invariably Escaped Their Notice.
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... What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Told Truthfully.
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Window Panes
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The One Certain Thing Was That Death Never Came At An Expected Moment.
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Military
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It Was Almost Normal For People Over Thirty To Be Frightened Of Their Own Children
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Party
Care
Tyranny
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Love And Friendship
Tragedy
Privacy
The Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.
History
Battle
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If You Kept The Small Rules, You Could Break The Big Ones.
Break
Bigs
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Never Have Ideas About Children, And Never Have Ideas For Them.
Teacher
Children
Ideas
All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News.
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Marketing
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Memories
Past
Agree Upon
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Class
Essentials
So Much Of Left-wing Thought Is A Kind Of Playing With Fire By People Who Don't Even Know That Fire Is Hot.
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People
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Objects
For Weeks Past He Had Been Making Ready For This Moment, And It Had Never Crossed His Mind That Anything Would Be Needed Except Courage. The Actual Writing Would Be Easy. All He Had To Do Was To Transfer To Paper The Interminable Restless Monologue That Had Been Running Inside His Head, Literally For Years.
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Should Have
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Oppression
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Peace
Political Language
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Propaganda
Art Is
As A Rule They Will Refuse Even To Sample A Foreign Dish, They Regard Such Things As Garlic And Olive Oil With Disgust, Life Is Unliveable To Them Unless They Have Tea And Puddings.
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Cooking
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Loss
Mysterious Things
Mind
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Adopted
His Whole Mind And Body Seemed To Be Afflicted With An Unbearable Sensitivity, A Sort Of Transparency, Which Made Every Movement, Every Sound, Every Contact, Every Word That He Had To Speak Or Listen To, An Agony. Even In Sleep He Could Not Altogether Escape Form Her Image.
Sleep
Agony
Mind
There Is Only One Way To Make Money At Writing, And That Is To Marry A Publisher's Daughter.
Daughter
Writing
Way
The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.
Perfect
Liberty
Libertarian
I Suppose There Is No Place In The World Where Snobbery Is Quite So Ever-present Or Where It Is Cultivated In Such Refined And Subtle Forms As In An English Public School. Here At Least One Cannot Say That English ‘education’ Fails To Do Its Job. You Forget Your Latin And Greek Within A Few Months Of Leaving School — I Studied Greek For Eight Or Ten Years, And Now, At Thirty-three, I Cannot Even Repeat The Greek Alphabet — But Your Snobbishness, Unless You Persistently Root It Out Like The Bindweed It Is, Sticks By You Till Your Grave.
Jobs
Latin
School
A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outline And Covering Up All The Details. 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 Spurting Out Ink. In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics'. All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred, And Schizophrenia. When The General Atmosphere Is Bad, Language Must Suffer.
Lying
Latin
Real
We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing.
Dust
Knowing
True Life
Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Orthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.
Writing
People
Political
The Real Division Is Not Between Conservatives And Revolutionaries But Between Authoritarians And Libertarians.
Real
Lefties
Division
I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.
Funny
Life
Talking
All People Who Have Reached The Point Of Becoming Nations Tend To Despise Foreigners, But There Is Not Much Doubt That The English-speaking Races Are The Worst Offenders. One Can See This From The Fact That As Soon As They Become Fully Aware Of Any Foreign Race They Invent An Insulting Nickname For It.
Race
Racism
People
If He Thinks He Floats Off The Floor, And If I Simultaneously Think I See Him Do It, Then The Thing Happens.
Thinking
Happens
Floats
Myths Which Are Believed In Tend To Become True.
Truth
Political
Belief
Political Chaos Is Connected With The Decay Of Language... One Can Probably Bring About Some Improvement By Starting At The Verbal End.
Political Language
Decay
Chaos
Most People Get A Fair Amount Of Fun Out Of Their Lives, But On Balance Life Is Suffering, And Only The Very Young Or The Very Foolish Imagine Otherwise.
Fun
World Suffering
People
Can You Not Understand That Liberty Is Worth More Than Ribbons?
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Ribbons
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Learning
Unhappy
Looks
It Struck Him That In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy, But Always Against One’s Own Body... On The Battlefield, In The Torture Chamber, On A Sinking Ship, The Issues That You Are Fighting For Are Always Forgotten, Because The Body Swells Up Until It Fills The Universe, And Even When You Are Not Paralysed By Fright Or Screaming With Pain, Life Is A Moment-to-moment Struggle Against Hunger Or Cold Or Sleeplessness, Against A Sour Stomach Or An Aching Tooth.
Pain
Struggle
Fighting
Now He Had Recognized Himself As A Dead Man It Became Important To Stay Alive As Long As Possible.
Men
Long
Important
Recently I Was Reading Somewhere Or Other An Italian Curio-dealer Who Attempted To Sell A 17th Century Crucifix To J.p. Morgan. Inside It Was Concealed A Stiletto. What A Perfect Symbol Of The Christian Religion.
Christian
Reading
Italian
Reality Is Inside The Skull.
Reality
Skulls
We Have Now Sunk To A Depth At Which Restatement Of The Obvious Is The First Duty Of Intelligent Men.
Intelligent
Men
Intelligence
I Understand How. I Do Not Understand Why
Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.
Two
Evil
Choices
Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.
Pain
Hatred
Sorrow
Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.
Reality
Bumps
Belief
Why Should Be Fruit Be Held Inferior To The Flower?
Flower
Fruit
Should
I Had Been In London Innumerable Times, And Yet Till That Day I Had Never Noticed One Of The Worst Things About London-the Fact That It Costs Money Even To Sit Down.
Cost
London
Facts
To Survive It Is Often Necessary To Fight And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself.
Dirty
Fighting
Survival
It Had Become Usual To Give Napoleon The Credit For Every Successful Achievement And Every Stroke Of Good Fortune. You Would Often Hear One Hen Remark To Another, "under The Guidance Of Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I Have Laid Five Eggs In Six Days" Or Two Cows, Enjoying A Drink At The Pool, Would Exclaim, "thanks To The Leadership Of Comrade Napoleon, How Excellent This Water Tastes!".
Successful
Eggs
Two
Big Brother Is Watching You.
Brother
Government
Bigs
During Five Literary Generations Every Enlightened Person Had Despised Him, And At The End Of That Time Nine-tenths Of Those Enlightened Persons Are Forgotten And Kipling Is In Some Sense Still There.
Art
Generations
Nine
At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Ideas Of Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question. It Is Not Exactly Forbidden To Say This, That Or The Other, But It Is 'not Done' To Say It... Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing, Either In The Popular Press Or In The High-brow Periodicals.
Thinking
Effectiveness
Ideas
You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty, And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.
Empty
Hollow
That Rifle Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Labourer's Cottage Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.
Jobs
Wall
Gun
The English Are Not Happy Unless They Are Miserable, The Irish Are Not At Peace Unless They Are At War, And The Scots Are Not At Home Unless They Are Abroad.
War
Home
Scotland
There Is No Swifter Route To The Corruption Of Thought Than Through The Corruption Of Language
Language
Corruption
Routes
When The White Man Turns Tyrant It Is His Own Freedom That He Destroys.he Becomes A Sort Of Hollow,posing Dummy,the Conventional Figure Of A Sahib.for It Is The Condition Of His Rule That He Shall Spend His Life In Trying To Impress The "natives",and So In Every Crisis He Has Got To Do What The "natives" Expect Of Him.he Wears A Mask And His Face Grows To Fit It.
Men
White Man
Tyrants
Don’t You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? In The End We Shall Make Thoughtcrime Literally Impossible, Because There Will Be No Words In Which To Express It.
Political
Nineteen
Impossible
Most People Approve Of Capital Punishment, But Most People Wouldn't Do The Hangman's Job.
Jobs
Punishment
People
... 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.
Strong
Simple
Long
In Places This Book Is A Little Over-written, Because Mr Blunden Is No More Able To Resist A Quotation Than Some People Are To Refuse A Drink.
Book
People
Littles
We Have Become Too Civilized To Grasp The Obvious. For The Truth Is Very Simple. To Survive You Often Have To Fight, And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself. War Is Evil, And It Is Often The Lesser Evil. Those Who Take The Sword Perish By The Sword, And Those Who Don't Take The Sword Perish By Smelly Diseases.
War
Dirty
Fighting
The Essential Point Here Is That All People With Small, Insecure Incomes Are In The Same Boat And Ought To Be Fighting On The Same Side. Probably We Could Do With A Little Less Talk About' Capitalist' And 'proletarian' And A Little More About The Robbers And The Robbed.
Fighting
Insecure
Economic Inequality
In All The Modern Talk About Energy, Efficiency, Social Service And The Rest Of It, What Meaning Is There Except "get Money, Get It Legally, And Get A Lot Of It"? Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue.
Energy
Tests
Get Money
The Mutability Of The Past Is The Central Tenet Of Ingsoc. Past Events, It Is Argued, Have No Objective Existance, But Survive Only In Written Records And In Human Memories. The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon. And Since The Party Is In Full Control Of All Records, And In Equally Full Control Of The Minds Of Its Members, It Follows That The Past Is Whatever The Party Chooses To Make It.
Memories
Party
Past
When I Sit Down To Write A Book, I Do Not Say To Myself, 'i Am Going To Produce A Work Of Art.' I Write It Because There Is Some Lie That I Want To Expose, Some Fact To Which I Want To Draw Attention, And My Initial Concern Is To Get A Hearing.
Art
Lying
Book
It Is Fatal To Look Hungry. It Makes People Want To Kick You.
People
Looks
Want
Some Hams Hanging In The Kitchen Were Taken Out For Burial
Taken
Kitchen
Ham
Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist. This Is Elementary Common Sense. If You Hamper The War Effort Of One Side, You Automatically Help Out That Of The Other. Nor Is There Any Real Way Of Remaining Outside Such A War As The Present One. In Practice, 'he That Is Not With Me Is Against Me'.
Real
War
Practice
Lack Of Money Means Discomfort, Means Squalid Worries, Means Shortage Of Tobacco, Means Ever-present Consciousness Of Failure-above All, It Means Loneliness.
Loneliness
Mean
Worry
The Seven Commandments: Whatever Goes Upon Two Legs Is An Enemy. Whatever Goes Upon Four Legs, Or Has Wings, Is A Friend. No Animal Shall Wear Clothes. No Animal Shall Sleep In A Bed. No Animal Shall Drink Alcohol. No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal. All Animals Are Equal.
Sleep
Animal
Wings
There Is Hardly Such A Thing As A War In Which It Makes No Difference Who Wins. Nearly Always One Side Stands More Of Less For Progress, The Other Side More Or Less For Reaction.
War
Winning
Differences
I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside. Has It Ever Struck You That There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man, Just As They Say There's A Statue Inside Every Block Of Stone?
Block
Men
Stones
Mankind Is Not Likely To Salvage Civilization Unless He Can Evolve A System Of Good And Evil Which Is Independent Of Heaven And Hell.
Independent
Civilization
Evil
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.
Memories
Past
Years
The More Men You've Had, The More I Love You.
Love You
Men
There Is A Geographical Element In All Belief-saying What Seem Profound Truths In India Have A Way Of Seeming Enormous Platitudes In England, And Vice Versa . Perhaps The Fundamental Difference Is That Beneath A Tropical Sun Individuality Seems Less Distinct And The Loss Of It Less Important.
Loss
Differences
Profound
Journalism Is Printing What Someone Else Does Not Want Printed: Everything Else Is Public Relations.
Doe
Want
Publicity
Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.
Mean
Ends
Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.
Life
Fake People
Events
[what Hayek] Does Not See, Or Will Not Admit, [is] That A Return To "free" Competition Means For The Great Mass Of People A Tyranny Probably Worse, Because More Irresponsible, Than That Of The State. The Trouble With Competitions Is That Somebody Wins Them. Professor Hayek Denies That Free Capitalism Necessarily Leads To Monopoly, But In Practice That Is Where It Has Led, And Since The Vast Majority Of People Would Far Rather Have State Regimentation Than Slumps And Unemployment, The Drift Towards Collectivism Is Bound To Continue If Popular Opinion Has Any Say In The Matter.
Mean
Winning
Practice
If You Ask Any Ordinary Reader Which Of Dickens's Proletarian Characters He Can Remember, The Three He Is Almost Certain To Mention Are Bill Sykes, Sam Weller And Mrs. Gamp. A Burglar, A Valet And A Drunken Midwife-not Exactly A Representative Cross-section Of The English Working Class.
Character
Class
Ordinary
Those Who 'abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.
Violence
Behalf
Can Do
At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.
Birthday
Fifty
Faces
Modern Writing At Its Worst Does Not Consist In Picking Out Words For The Sake Of Their Meaning And Inventing Images In Order To Make The Meaning Clearer. It Consists In Gumming Together Long Strips Of Words Which Have Already Been Set In Order By Someone Else, And Making The Results Presentable By Sheer Humbug. The Attraction Of This Way Of Writing Is That It Is Easy.
Writing
Order
Long
Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.
Drinking
Beer
Drunk
Either We All Live In A Decent World, Or Nobody Does.
Doe
World
Decent
We Have Sunk So Low It Has Become The Obligation Of Every Decent, Thinking Individual To Re-state The Obvious!
Thinking
Individual
States
If Human Equality Is To Be Forever Averted -- If The High, As We Have Called Them, Are To Keep Their Places Permanently -- Then The Prevailing Mental Condition Must Be Controlled Insanity.
Forever
Insanity
Nineteen
In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.
Pain
Hero
Faces
A Fat Man Is Never So Happy As When He Is Describing Himself As "robust.
Men
Obesity
Robust
You Must Have Seen Great Changes Since You Were A Young Man," Said Winston Tentatively. The Old Man's Pale Blue Eyes Moved From The Darts Board To The Bar, And From The Bar To The Door Of The Gents ... "the Beer Was Better," He Said Finally. "and Cheaper! When I Was A Young Man, Mild Beer - Wallop We Used To Call It - Was Fourpence A Pint. That Was Before The War, Of Course." "which War Was That?" Said Winston. "it's All Wars," Said The Old Man Vaguely. He Took Up His Glass, And His Shoulders Straightened Again. "'ere's Wishing You The Very Best Of 'ealth!
War
Eye
Beer
I Have No Wish To Take Life, Not Even Human Life
Wish
Human Life
Humans
Surely, Comrades, You Don't Want Jones Back?
Want
Animalism
Comrade
A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To Be A Failure, But Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks.
Men
May
Failing
The Four Great Motives For Writing Prose Are Sheer Egoism, Esthetic Enthusiasm, Historical Impulse, And Political Purpose.
Writing
Political
Historical
He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear. But So Long As He Uttered It, In Some Obscure Way The Continuity Was Not Broken. It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.
Lonely
Long
Broken
In A Town Like London There Are Always Plenty Of Not Quite Certifiable Lunatics Walking The Streets, And They Tend To Gravitate Towards Bookshops, Because A Bookshop Is One Of The Few Places Where You Can Hang About For A Long Time Without Spending Any Money.
Long
London
Towns
He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear.
Lonely
Ghost
I Had The Lonely Child's Habit Of Making Up Stories And Holding Conversations With Imaginary Persons, And I Think From The Very Start My Literary Ambitions Were Mixed Up With The Feeling Of Being Isolated And Undervalued. I Knew That I Had A Facility With Words And A Power Of Facing Unpleasant Facts, And I Felt That This Created A Sort Of Private World In Which I Could Get My Own Back For My Failure In Everyday Life.
Lonely
Children
Ambition
It Said What He Would Have Said, If It Had Been Possible For Him To Set His Scattered Thoughts In Order. It Was The Product Of A Mind Similar To His Own, But Enormously More Powerful, More Systematic, Less Fear-ridden. The Best Books, He Perceived, Are Those That Tell You What You Know Already.
Powerful
Book
Order
Winston Was Gelatinous With Fatigue.
Fatigue
In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible. Things Like The Continuance Of British Rule In India, The Russian Purges And Deportations, The Dropping Of The Atom Bombs On Japan, Can Indeed Be Defended, But Only By Arguments Which Are Too Brutal For Most People To Face, And Which Do Not Square With The Professed Aims Of The Political Parties. Thus Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness.
Party
Writing
Squares
Until One Has Some Kind Of Professional Relationship With Books, One Does Not Discover How Bad The Majority Of Them Are.
Book
Majority
Doe
Imperialism As He [kipling] Sees It Is A Sort Of Forcible Evangelising.
Imperialism
Kipling
Creeds Like Pacifism Or Anarchism, Which Seem On The Surface To Imply A Complete Renunciation Of Power, Rather Encourage This Habit Of Mind. For If You Have Embraced A Creed Which Appears To Be Free From The Ordinary Dirtiness Of Politics ... The More You Are In The Right (and) Everybody Else Should Be Bullied Into Thinking Otherwise.
Thinking
Mind
Atheism
He [gandhi] Was Not One Of Those Saints Who Are Marked Out By Their Phenomenal Piety From Childhood Onwards, Nor One Of The Other Kind Who Forsake The World After Sensational Debaucheries.
Childhood
Saint
World
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
Strength
Peace
Freedom
Records Told The Same Tale, Then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth.
War
Lying
Drug
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