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Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print.
-George Orwell
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Never Use A Metaphor,

George Orwell
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Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print.

Understanding the Quote: "never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you..."

This quote by George Orwell reflects deeply on the theme of speech. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Speech, Use, Metaphor, 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 speech and use. 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
Speech
Use
Metaphor
More From George Orwell
Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?
I Am Struck Again By The Fact That As Soon As A Working Man Gets An Official Post In The Trade Union Or Goes Into Labour Politics, He Becomes Middle-class Whether He Will Or No. Ie. By Fighting Against The Bourgeoisie He Becomes A Bourgeois. The Fact Is That You Cannot Help Living In The Manner Appropriate And Developing The Ideology Appropriate To Your Income.
Fighting
Men
Class
True Freedom Is The Right To Say Something That Others Don't Want To Hear.
Want
True Freedom
Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.
Reality
Bumps
Belief
Poverty Frees Them From Ordinary Standards Of Behaviour, Just As Money Frees People From Work.
People
Ordinary
Behaviour
Totalitarianism, However, Does Not So Much Promise An Age Of Faith As An Age Of Schizophrenia. 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. Such A Society, No Matter How Long It Persists, Can Never Afford To Become Either Tolerant Or Intellectually Stable.
Running
Past
Class
Think Of Something You Really Care About. Then Add Hour To Hour And Calculate The Fraction Of Your Life That You've Actually Spent In Doing It. And Then Calculate The Time You've Spent On Things Like Shaving, Riding To And Fro On Buses, Waiting In Railway Junctions, Swapping Dirty Stories, And Reading The Newspapers.
Dirty
Reading
Thinking
The Cheaper Books Become, The Less Money Is Spent On Books.
Book
Cheaper
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
Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.
Pain
Hatred
Sorrow
When I See A Policeman With A Club Beating A Man On The Ground, I Don't Have To Ask Whose Side I'm On.
Men
Clubs
Sides
Everyone Believes In The Atrocities Of The Enemy And Disbelieves In Those Of His Own Side, Without Ever Bothering To Examine The Evidence.
Believe
Enemy
Atrocities
Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law.
Animal
Law
Public Opinion
However Much You Deny The Truth, The Truth Goes On Existing.
Goes On
Deny
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.
Real
Responsibility
Decision
The Aims Of These Three Groups Are Entirely Irreconcilable. The Aim Of The High Is To Remain Where They Are. The Aim Of The Middle Is To Change Places With The High. The Aim Of The Low, When They Have An Aim-for It Is An Abiding Characteristic Of The Low That They Are Too Much Crushed By Drudgery To Be More Than Intermittently Conscious Of Anything Outside Their Daily Lives -is To Abolish All Distinctions And Create A Society In Which All Men Shall Be Equal.
Men
Abiding
Groups
As I Write, Highly Civilized Human Beings Are Flying Overhead, Trying To Kill Me.
Wisdom
Writing
History
Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking
Thinking
Substitutes
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
Perhaps It Is Only When People Are Somewhere Near The Starvation Level That They Have Anything To Sing About.
People
Levels
Starvation
I Have Tipped Waiters, And I Have Been Tipped By Waiters.
Waiter
Has Beens
Does Big Brother Exist?" "of Course He Exists. The Party Exists. Big Brother Is The Embodiment Of The Party." "does He Exist In The Same Way As I Exist?" "you Do Not Exist.
Brother
Party
Doe
Modern English, Especially Written English, Is Full Of Bad Habits Which Spread By Imitation And Which Can Be Avoided If One Is Willing To Take The Necessary Trouble. If One Gets Rid Of These Habits One Can Think More Clearly, And To Think Clearly Is A Necessary First Step Toward Political Regeneration: So That The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous And Is Not The Exclusive Concern Of Professional [or Scholarly] Writers.
Fighting
Thinking
Political
...every Human Being Is Doomed To Die, Which Is The Greatest Of All Failures.
Humans
Doomed
Dies
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
Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking--not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.
Mean
Thinking
Orthodoxy
The Quickest Way Of Ending A War Is To Lose It.
Peace
Military
War
It Is The Same In All Wars; The Soldiers Do The Fighting, The Journalists Do The Shouting, And No True Patriot Ever Gets Near A Front-line Trench, Except On The Briefest Of Propaganda Tours.
War
Fighting
Soldier
One Can Love A Child, Perhaps, More Deeply Than One Can Love Another Adult, But It Is Rash To Assume That The Child Feels Any Love In Return.
Love
Children
Adults
Confession Is Not Betrayal. What You Say Or Do Doesn't Matter; Only Feelings Matter. If They Could Make Me Stop Loving You-that Would Be The Real Betrayal.
Love
Betrayal
Real
I Know It Is The Fashion To Say That Most Of Recorded History Is Lies Anyway. I Am Willing To Believe That History Is For The Most Part Inaccurate And Biased, But What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Truthfully Written.
Fashion
Lying
Believe
Always Eyes Watching You And The Voice Enveloping You. Asleep Or Awake, Indoors Or Out Of Doors, In The Bath Or Bed- No Escape. Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimeters In Your Skull.
Eye
Doors
Voice
The Food Crank Is By Definition A Person Willing To Cut Himself Off From Human Society In The Hopes Of Adding Five Years Onto The Life Of His Carcase; That Is, A Person Out Of Touch With Common Humanity.
Cutting
Years
Common Humanity
It Is A Feeling Of Relief, Almost Of Pleasure, At Knowing Yourself At Last Genuinely Down And Out. You Have Talked So Often Of Going To The Dogs - And Well, Here Are The Dogs, And You Have Reached Them, And You Can Stand It. It Takes Off A Lot Of Anxiety.
Dog
Knowing
Anxiety
A Scrupulous Writer In Every Sentence That He Writes Will Ask Himself. . . What Am I Trying To Say? What Words Will Express It?...and He Probably Asks Himself. . . Could I Put It More Shortly? But You Are Not Obliged To Go To All This Trouble. You Can Shirk It By Simply Throwing Open Your Mind And Letting The Ready-made Phrases Come Crowding In. They Will Construct Your Sentences For You
Writing
Mind
Trying
Political Language... Is Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable, And To Give An Appearance Of Solidity To Pure Wind.
Witty
Peace
Truth
Many People Genuinely Do Not Want To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings.
People
Temptation
Saint
There Are Some Things Only Intellectuals Are Crazy Enough To Believe.
Inspirational
Crazy
Believe
The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.
Enemy
Felt
Untruth
Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else. Not In The Individual Mind, Which Can Make Mistakes, And In Any Case Soon Perishes: Only In The Mind Of The Party, Which Is Collective And Immortal.
Mistake
Party
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Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.
Hate
Writing
Men
If You Kept The Small Rules, You Could Break The Big Ones.
Break
Bigs
Ifs
No One, At Any Rate No English Writer, Has Written Better About Childhood Than Dickens. In Spite Of All The Knowledge That Has Accumulated Since, In Spite Of The Fact That Children Are Now Comparatively Sanely Treated, No Novelist Has Shown The Same Power Of Entering Into The Child's Point Of View.
Children
Views
Childhood
The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection, That One Is Sometimes Willing To Commit Sins For The Sake Of Loyalty, That One Does Not Push Asceticism To The Point Where It Makes Friendly Intercourse Impossible, And That One Is Prepared In The End To Be Defeated And Broken Up By Life, Which Is The Inevitable Price Of Fastening One's Love Upon Other Human Individuals.
Love
Loyalty
Essence
The Most Effective Way To Destroy People Is To Deny And Obliterate Their Own Understanding Of Their History.
Inspirational
Life
People
News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.
News
Want
Advertising
People Talk About The Horrors Of War, But What Weapon Has A Man Invented That Even Approaches In Cruelty Some Of The Commoner Diseases? 'natural' Death, Almost By Defintion, Means Something Slow, Smelly And Painful.
Life
Death
War
The Fact Is That Every War Suffers A Kind Of Progressive Degradation With Every Month That It Continues, Because Such Things As Individual Liberty And A Truthful Press Are Simply Not Compatible With Military Efficiency.
Military
War
Suffering
To The Future Or To The Past, To A Time When Thought Is Free, When Men Are Different From One Another And Do Not Live Alone— To A Time When Truth Exists And What Is Done Cannot Be Undone: From The Age Of Uniformity, From The Age Of Solitude, From The Age Of Big Brother, From The Age Of Doublethink — Greetings!
Brother
Past
Men
How Could You Make Appeal To The Future When Not A Trace Of You, Not Even An Anonymous Word Scribbled On A Piece Of Paper, Could Physically Survive?
Pieces
Paper
Appeals
If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.
Inspirational
Life
Freedom
Many People Genuinely Do Not Wish To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings. If One Could Follow It To Its Psychological Roots, One Would, I Believe, Find That The Main Motive For "non-attachment" Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.
Pain
Believe
Hard Work
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
The Belly Comes Before The Soul.
Soul
Human Nature
Belly
Even Through The Shut Window Pane, The World Looked Cold.
Window Panes
World
Cold
The Words Democracy, Socialism, Freedom, Patriotic, Realistic, Justice Have Each Of Them Several Different Meanings Which Cannot Be Reconciled With One Another.
Patriotic
Justice
Democracy
The Whole Climate Of Thought Will Be Different. In Fact There Will Be No Thought, As We Understand It Now. Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking - Not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.
Mean
Thinking
Insightful
If You Want A Vision Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face - Forever.
Time
Freedom
Future
Certainly All "progressive" Thought, Has Assumed Tacitly That Human Beings Desire Nothing Beyond Ease, Security, And Avoidance Of Pain... Hitler, Because In His Joyless Mind He Feels It With Exceptional Strength, Knows That Human Beings Don't Only Want Comfort, Safety, Short Working-hours, Hygiene, Birth-control And, In General, Common Sense; They Also, At Least Intermittently, Want Struggle And Self-sacrifice, Not To Mention Drums, Flags And Loyalty-parades. However They May Be As Economic Theories, Fascism And Nazism Are Psychologically Far Sounder Than Any Hedonistic Conception Of Life.
Loyalty
Pain
Struggle
But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother.
Brother
Struggle
Victory
Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing. He Does Not Give Milk, He Does Not Lay Eggs, He Is Too Weak To Pull The Plough, He Cannot Run Fast Enough To Catch Rabbits. Yet He Is Lord Of All The Animals.
Running
Fear
Animal
The Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.
History
Battle
Cavalry
What Happens To You Here Is Forever.
Forever
Happens
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
We Know That No One Ever Seizes Power With The Intention Of Relinquishing It.
Power
Intention
1984 Important
Comrades!' He Cried. 'you Do Not Imagine, I Hope, That We Pigs Are Doing This In A Spirit Of Selfishness And Privilege? Many Of Us Actually Dislike Milk And Apples. I Dislike Them Myself. Our Sole Object In Taking These Things Is To Preserve Our Health. Milk And Apples (this Has Been Proved By Science, Comrades) Contain Substances Absolutely Necessary To The Well-being Of A Pig. We Pigs Are Brainworkers. The Whole Management And Organisation Of This Farm Depend On Us. Day And Night We Are Watching Over Your Welfare. It Is For Your Sake That We Drink The Milk And Eat Those Apples.
Animal
Night
Pigs
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.
Moving
Men
Thinking
The Four Great Motives For Writing Prose Are Sheer Egoism, Esthetic Enthusiasm, Historical Impulse, And Political Purpose.
Writing
Political
Historical
In Our Time Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible.
Time
Writing
Political Language
. . . It Is A Corrupting Thing To Live One's Real Life In Secret. One Should Live With The Stream Of Life, Not Against It.
Real
Secret
Should
The Planting Of A Tree, Especially One Of The Long-living Hardwood Trees, Is A Gift Which You Can Make To Posterity At Almost No Cost And With Almost No Trouble, And If The Tree Takes Root It Will Far Outlive The Visible Effect Of Any Of Your Other Actions, Good Or Evil.
Roots
Long
Evil
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.
Latin
Fall
Political Language
A Socialist United States Of Europe Seems To Me The Only Worth-while Political Objective Today
Europe
Political
United States
She Had Had Her Momentary Flowering, A Year, Perhaps, Of Wildrose Beauty, And Then She Had Suddenly Swollen Like A Fertilized Fruit And Grown Hard And Red And Coarse, And Then Her Life Had Been Laundering, Scrubbing, Laundering, First For Children, Then For Grandchildren, Over Thirty Years. At The End Of It She Was Still Singing.
Children
Years
Singing
Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.
Two
Evil
Choices
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
The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule, Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils.
Two
Evil
Choices
You Had To Live - Did Live, From Habit That Became Instinct - In The Assumption That Evey Sound You Made Was Overheard, And, Except In Darkness, Every Moment Scrutinized.
Darkness
Sound
Assumption
England Will Still Be England, An Everlasting Animal, Stretching Into The Future And The Past And Like All Living Things Having The Power To Change Out Of All Recognition And Yet Remain The Same.
Animal
Past
History
He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear.
Lonely
Ghost
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.
Art
Book
Literature
At Any Given Moment, There Is A Sort Of All Pervading Orthodoxy, A General Tacit Agreement Not To Discuss Large And Uncomfortable Facts.
Agreement
Orthodoxy
Facts
Hunger Reduces One To An Utterly Spineless, Brainless Condition, More Like The After-effects Of Influenza Than Anything Else. It Is As Though All One's Blood Had Been Pumped Out And Lukewarm Water Substituted.
Blood
Water
Hunger
To See What Is In Front Of One’s Nose Needs A Constant Struggle.
Courage
Truth
Struggle
The Primary Aim Of Modern Warfare ... Is To Use Up The Products Of The Machine Without Raising The General Standard Of Living.
Warfare
Machines
Use
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
You Can't Live Life Without Consequences. They Occur Regardless Of The Decision. A Consequence Is An Outcome, Good Or Bad. You Can Live Life Without Regrets And Thats What Makes It Worth It. Or You Could Live With Regret And End Up Hanging Yourself But Thats Still Good. You Paid For The Rope So Your Feeding Someones Family. Something To Be Proud Of Before You Kick The Bucket
Life
Regret
Decision
We Have Now Sunk To A Depth At Which Restatement Of The Obvious Is The First Duty Of Intelligent Men.
Intelligent
Men
Intelligence
The Ministry Of Peace Concerns Itself With War, The Ministry Of Truth With Lies, The Ministry Of Love With Torture And The Ministry Of Plenty With Starvation. These Contradictions Are Not Accidental , Nor Do They Result From From Ordinary Hypocrisy: They Are Deliberate Exercises In Doublethink
War
Lying
Exercise
All True Tea Lovers Not Only Like Their Tea Strong, But Like It A Little Stronger With Each Year That Passes.
Strong
Years
Tea
But The Problems Of Perpetuating A Hierarchical Society Go Deeper Than This. There Are Only Four Ways In Which A Ruling Group Can Fall From Power. Either It Is Conquered From Without, Or It Governs So Inefficiently That The Masses Are Stirred To Revolt, Or It Allows A Strong And Discontented Middle Group To Come Into Being, Or It Loses Its Own Self-confidence And Willingness To Govern.
Strong
Fall
Self Confidence
He Was Conscious Of Nothing Except The Blankness Of The Page In Front Of Him, The Itching Of The Skin Above His Ankle, The Blaring Of The Music, And A Slight Booziness Caused By The Gin.
Writing
Skins
Ankles
Threats To Freedom Of Speech, Writing And Action, Though Often Trivial In Isolation, Are Cumulative In Their Effect And, Unless Checked, Lead To A General Disrespect For The Rights Of The Citizen.
Freedom
Writing
Rights
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
On A Ruinous Wall I Came Upon A Poster Dating From The Previous Year And Announcing That ‘six Handsome Bulls’ Would Be Killed In The Arena On Such And Such A Date. How Forlorn Its Faded Colours Looked. Where Were The Handsome Bulls And The Handsome Bull-fighters Now? It Appeared That Even In Barcelona There Were Hardly Any Bullfights Nowadays - For Some Reason All The Best Matadors Were Fascists.
Wall
Years
Dating
The Communism Of The English Intellectual Is Something Explicable Enough. It Is The Patriotism Of The Deracinated.
Intellectual
Communism
Enough
International Football Is The Continuation Of War By Other Means.
Soccer
Football
War
We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future.
True Life
Splinters
Life Is
In Certain Kinds Of Writing, Particularly In Art Criticism And Literary Criticism, It Is Normal To Come Across Long Passages Which Are Almost Completely Lacking In Meaning.
Art
Writing
Math
Clover Was A Stout Motherly Mare Approaching Middle Life, Who Had Never Quite Got Her Figure Back After Her Fourth Foal.
Foals
Motherly
Figures
Imperialism As He [kipling] Sees It Is A Sort Of Forcible Evangelising.
Imperialism
Kipling
Now He Had Recognized Himself As A Dead Man It Became Important To Stay Alive As Long As Possible.
Men
Long
Important
If One Harbours Anywhere In One's Mind A Nationalistic Loyalty Or Hatred, Certain Facts, Although In A Sense Known To Be True, Are Inadmissible.
Loyalty
Hatred
Patriotism
If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself. You Must Know All The While That It Is There, But Until It Is Needed You Must Never Let It Emerge Into Your Consciousness In Any Shape That Can Be Given A Name.
Names
Secret
Shapes
Mrs Weaver Nosed Among The Books, Too Dim-witted To Grasp That They Were In Alphabetical Order.
Book
Order
Weavers
In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.
Real
Hammers
Anvils
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?
Intelligent
Giving
Atheism
There Were Sins That Were Too Subtle To Be Explained, And There Were Others That Were Too Terrible To Be Clearly Mentioned. For Example, There Was Sex, Which Was Always Smouldering Just Under The Surface And Which Suddenly Blew Up Into A Tremendous Row When I Was About Twelve.
Sex
Twelve
Example
I Think I Exist,' He Said Wearily. 'i Am Conscious Of My Own Identity. I Was Born, And I Shall Die. I Have Arms And Legs. I Occupy A Particular Point In Space. No Other Solid Object Can Occupy The Same Point Simultaneously.
Thinking
Space
Identity
The Plant Is Blind But It Knows Enough To Keep Pushing Upwards Towards The Light, And It Will Continue To Do This In The Face Of Endless Discouragements.
Light
Faces
Pushing
By The Time You Have Perfected Any Style Of Writing, You Have Always Outgrown It.
Writing
Style
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.
War
Hands
Two
In All The Useful Arts The World Is Either Standing Still Or Going Backwards.
Art
World
Futuristic
By ' Patriotism ' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life , Which One Believes To Be The Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People.
Believe
Mean
People
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
Strength
Peace
Freedom
The End Was Contained In The Beginning.
Ends
A Thing Which I Regret, And Which I Will Try To Remedy Some Time, Is That I Have Never In My Life Planted A Walnut. Nobody Does Plant Them Nowadays-when You See A Walnut It Is Almost Invariably An Old Tree. If You Plant A Walnut You Are Planting It For Your Grandchildren, And Who Cares A Damn For His Grandchildren?
Regret
Grandchildren
Tree
Records Told The Same Tale, Then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth.
War
Lying
Drug
The Relative Freedom Which We Enjoy Depends Of Public Opinion. The Law Is No Protection. Governments Make Laws, But Whether They Are Carried Out, And How The Police Behave, Depends On The General Temper In The Country. If Large Numbers Of People Are Interested In Freedom Of Speech, There Will Be Freedom Of Speech, Even If The Law Forbids It; If Public Opinion Is Sluggish, Inconvenient Minorities Will Be Persecuted, Even If Laws Exist To Protect Them.
Country
Freedom
Law
To An Ordinary Human Being, Love Means Nothing If It Does Not Mean Loving Some People More Than Others.
Love
Heart
Mean
[a] World In Which It Is Wrong To Murder An Individual Civilian And Right To Drop A Thousand Tons Of High Explosive On A Residential Area Does Sometimes Make Me Wonder Whether This Earth Of Ours Is Not A Loony Bin Made Use Of By Some Other Planet. Not To Have A National Anthem Would Be Logical.
Would Be
Use
World
It Was Soon Noticed That When Ever There Was Work To Be Done The Cat Could Never Be Found.
Cat
Done
Found
Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache... Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.
Men
Thinking
Perfection
The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.
Common Sense
Common
Heresy
To Say "i Accept" In An Age Like Our Own Is To Say That You Accept Concentration-camps, Rubber Truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, Bombs, Aeroplanes, Tinned Food, Machine Guns, Putsches, Purges, Slogans, Bedaux Belts, Gas-masks, Submarines, Spies, Provocateurs, Press-censorship, Secret Prisons, Aspirins, Hollywood Films And Political Murder.
Freedom
Gun
Hollywood Films
Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.
Dog
Freedom
Liberty
[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
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.
Writing
People
Frightened
There Were Times When The Fact Of Impending Death Seemed As Palpable As The Bed They Lay On, And They Would Cling Together With A Sort Of Despairing Sensuality, Like A Damned Soul Grasping At His Last Morsel Of Pleasure When The Clock Is Within Five Minutes Of Striking. But There Were Also Times When They Had The Illusion Not Only Of Safety But Of Permanence.
Safety
Soul
Together
As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.
Christian
Political
Advertising
If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought. A Bad Usage Can Spread By Tradition And Imitation Even Among People Who Should And Do Know Better.
People
Language
Tradition
For, When You Are Approaching Poverty, You Make One Discovery Which Outweighs Some Of The Others. 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 Future. Within Certain Limits, It Is Actually True That The Less Money You Have, The Less You Worry.
Mean
Discovery
Worry
While The Game Of Deadlocks And Bottle-necks Goes On, Another More Serious Game Is Also Being Played. It Is Governed By Two Axioms. One Is That There Can Be No Peace Without A General Surrender Of Sovereignty: The Other Is That No Country Capable Of Defending Its Sovereignty Ever Surrenders It. 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.
Country
Games
Two
What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.
Years
Work Out
Secret
Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!
Two
Legs
Four
Rifles, Muskets, Long-bows And Hand-grenades Are Inherently Democratic Weapons. 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
Gun
Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent, But The Tests That Have To Be Applied To Them Are Not, Of Course, The Same In All Cases.
Saint
Tests
Guilty
Poverty Is Spiritual Halitosis.
Spiritual
Poverty
What Opinions The Masses Hold, Or Do Not Hold, Is Looked Upon As A Matter Of Indifference. They Can Be Granted Intellectual Liberty Becasue They Have No Intellect.
Intellectual
Liberty
Matter
Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout With Some Painful Illness. One Would Never Undertake Such A Thing If One Were Not Driven On By Some Demon Whom One Can Neither Resist Nor Understand.
Struggle
Book
Writing
It Was Terribly Dangerous To Let Your Thoughts Wander When You Were In Any Public Place Or Within Range Of A Telescreen. The Smallest Thing Could Give You Away. A Nervous Tic, An Unconscious Look Of Anxiety, A Habit Of Muttering To Yourself-anything That Carried With It The Suggestion Of Abnormality, Of Having Something To Hide. In Any Case, To Wear An Improper Expression On Your Face ... Was Itself A Punishable Offense. There Was Even A Word For It In Newspeak: Facecrime.
Expression
Giving
Anxiety
Surely, Comrades, You Don't Want Jones Back?
Want
Animalism
Comrade
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.
Men
Tragedy
Triumph
Pessimism Is Reactionary Because It Makes The Very Idea Of Improving The World Impossible.
Ideas
World
Impossible
All The War-propaganda, All The Screaming And Lies And Hatred, Comes Invariably From People Who Are Not Fighting.
Peace
War
Lying
Friend Of Fatherless! Fountain Of Happiness! Lord Of The Swill-bucket! Oh, How My Soul Is On Fire When I Gaze At Thy Calm And Commanding Eye. Like The Sun In The Sky, Comrade Napoleon! Thou Are The Giver Of All Thy Creatures Love, Full Belly Twice A Day, Clean Straw To Roll Upon; Every Beast Great Or Small, Sleeps At Peace In His Stall, Thou Watchest Over All, Comrade Napoleon! Had I A Sucking-pig, Ere He Had Grown As Big Even As A Pint Bottle Or A A Rolling-pin He Should Have Learned To Be Faithful And True To Thee, Yes, His First Squeak Should Be Comrade Napoleon!
Sleep
Eye
Fire
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
Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.
Life
Fake People
Events
Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.
Life
Orthodoxy
Unconsciousness
A Man Who Gives A Good Account Of Himself Is Probably Lying, Since Any Life When Viewed From The Inside Is Simply A Series Of Defeats.
Lying
Men
Giving
Perhaps A Man Really Dies When His Brain Stops, When He Loses The Power To Take In A New Idea.
Men
Ideas
Brain
And If Our Book Consumption Remains As Low As It Has Been, At Least Let Us Admit That It Is Because Reading Is A Less Exciting Pastime Than Going To The Dogs, The Pictures Or The Pub, And Not Because Books, Whether Bought Or Borrowed, Are Too Expensive.
Dog
Book
Reading
[...] You Can Get Anything In This World If You Genuinely Don't Want It.
World
Want
This World
Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.
Sports
War
Squash
If I Had To Make A List Of Six Books Which Were To Be Preserved When All Others Were Destroyed, I Would Certainly Put Gulliver's Travels Among Them.
Book
Gulliver
Lists
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
All Art Is Propaganda.
Art
Propaganda
Art Is
Tea Is One Of The Main Stays Of Civilization In This Country.
Country
Civilization
Tea Drinking
To Hang On From Day To Day And From Week To Week, Spinning Out A Present That Had No Future, Seemed An Unconquerable Instinct, Just As One's Lungs Will Always Draw The Next Breath So Long As There Is Air Available.
Air
Long
Nineteen
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
Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip, But The Really Well-trained Dog Is The One That Turns His Somersault When There Is No Whip.
Dog
Cracks
Circus
To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.
Mean
Civilization
Political
One Does Not Establish A Dictatorship In Order To Safeguard A Revolution; One Makes A Revolution In Order To Establish A Dictatorship.
Order
Doe
Revolution
Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.
Latin
Greek
Notion
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 And Tens Of Millions Of People Can Be Confidently Labeled 'good' Or 'bad'...by 'patriotism' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life, Which One Believes To Be Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People. Patriotism Is Of Its Nature Defensive, Both Militarily And Culturally. Nationalism, On The Other Hand, Is Inseparable From The Desire For Power.
Block
Believe
Mean
Your Worst Enemy, He Reflected, Was Your Nervous System. At Any Moment The Tension Inside You Was Liable To Translate Itself Into Some Visible Symptom.
Worst Enemy
Nineteen
Nervous
The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.
Perfect
Liberty
Libertarian
You Preferred To Be A Lunatic, A Minority Of One.
Minorities
Lunatic
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.
Animal
Two
Legs
Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.
Stupid
Believe
Ideas
Most People Who Bother With The Matter At All Would Admit That The English Language Is In A Bad Way, But It Is Generally Assumed That We Cannot By Conscious Action Do Anything About It.
People
Matter
Way
Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me--
Tree
Nineteen
Chestnuts
The Point Is That We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right. Intellectually, It Is Possible To Carry On This Process For An Indefinite Time: The Only Check On It Is That Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.
Faith
Believe
Reality
We Are In A Strange Period Of History In Which A Revolutionary Has To Be A Patriot And A Patriot Has To Be A Revolutionary.
Strange
Revolutionary
Patriot
Being In A Minority, Even In A Minority Of One, Did Not Make You Mad. There Was Truth And There Was Untruth, And If You Clung To The Truth Even Against The Whole World, You Were Not Mad.
Mad
Nineteen
Minorities
... What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Told Truthfully.
Ideas
Age
Peculiar
I Felt As If I Was The Only Person Awake In A City Of Sleepwalkers. That's An Illusion, Of Course. When You Walk Through A Crowd Of Strangers It's Next Door To Impossible Not To Imagine That They're All Waxworks, But Probably They're Thinking Just The Same About You.
Thinking
Doors
Cities
It Was Given Out That The Animals There Practised Cannibalism, Tortured One Another With Red-hot Horseshoes, And Had Their Females In Common. This Was What Came Of Rebelling Against The Laws Of Nature, Frederick And Pilkington Said.
Animal
Law
Hot
Fate Seemed To Be Playing A Series Of Extraordinarily Unamusing Jokes.
Fate
Jokes
Series
The Word Fascism Has Now No Meaning Except In So Far As It Signifies 'something Not Desirable.'
Fascism
Desirable
Prolonged, Indiscriminate Reviewing Of Books Is A Quite Exceptionally Thankless, Irritating And Exhausting Job. It Not Only Involves Praising Trash But Constantly Inventing Reactions Towards Books About Which One Has No Spontaneous Feeling Whatever.
Jobs
Book
Feelings
A Family With The Wrong Members In Control; That, Perhaps, Is As Near As One Can Come To Describing England In A Phrase.
Family
Insulting
Phrases
Cricket Is A Game Full Or Forlorn Hopes And Sudden Dramatic Changes Of Fortune And Its Rules Are So Ill-defined That Their Interpretation Is Partly An Ethical Business.
Business
Games
Dramatic
Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.
Worship
Politician
Thrive
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.
Forever
Enemy
Victory
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
... 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
Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.
Winning
Achievement
Corrupt Power
Dickens Is One Of Those Authors Who Are Well Worth Stealing.
Literature
Stealing
Wells
If You Can Feel That Staying Human Is Worth While, Even When It Can't Have Any Practical Result Whatsoever, You've Beaten Them.
Investing
Results
Feels
If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.
Love
Marriage
Giving
Bombing Is Not Especially Inhumane. War Itself Is Inhumane And The Bombing Plane, Which Is Used To Paralyse Industry And Transport, Is A Relatively Civilised Weapon. 'normal' Or 'legitimate' Warfare Is Just As Destructive Of Inanimate Objects And Enormously So Of Human Lives.
War
Historical
Inanimate Objects
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.
Thinking
Animal
Law
Sanity Was Statistical. It Was Merely A Question Of Learning To Think As They Thought.
Thinking
Sanity
Before The War, And Especially Before The Boer War, It Was Summer All The Year Round.
Summer
Peace
War
One Sometimes Gets The Impression That The Mere Words ' Socialism ' And ' Communism ' Draw Towards Them With Magnetic Force Every Fruit-juice Drinker, Nudist, Sandal-wearer, Sex-maniac, Quaker, 'nature Cure' Quack, Pacifist, And Feminist In England.
Sex
Fruit Juice
Feminist
One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing.
Society Has Always Seemed To Demand A Little More From Human Beings Than It Will Get In Practice.
Anger
Practice
Society
Patriotism Has Nothing To Do With Conservatism. It Is Actually The Opposite Of Conservatism, Since It Is A Devotion To Something That Is Always Changing And Yet Is Felt To Be Mystically The Same.
Opposites
Devotion
Conservatism
In My Opinion Nothing Has Contributed More To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country.
Country
Philosophy
Russia
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