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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.
-George Orwell
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That Rifle Hanging On

George Orwell
...
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.

Understanding the Quote: "that rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer's..."

This quote by George Orwell reflects deeply on the theme of jobs. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Jobs, Wall, Gun, 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 jobs and wall. 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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Hatred
Patriotism
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
By Preaching The Doctrine That Nothing Is To Be Admired Except Steel And Concrete, One Merely Makes It A Little Surer That Human Beings Will Have No Outlet For Their Surplus Energy Except In Hatred And Leader Worship.
Hatred
Leader
Doctrine
Don't You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? Has It Ever Occurred To You, Winston, That By The Year 2050, At The Very Latest, Not A Single Human Being Will Be Alive Who Could Understand Such A Conversation As We Are Having Now?
Mean
Thinking
Years
Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.
Ideas
Together
Indestructible
During The First Two Months Of The War It Was The Anarchists More Than Anyone Else Who Had Saved The Situation, And Much Later Than This The Anarchist Militia, In Spite Of Their Indiscipline, Were Notoriously The Best Fighters Among The Purely Spanish Forces.
War
Two
Months
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
Reality
The Words Kept Coming Back To Him, Statement Of A Mystical Truth And A Palpable Absurdity.
Coming Back
Mystical
Absurdity
Doublethink Means The Power Of Holding Two Contradictory Beliefs In One's Mind Simultaneously, And Accepting Both Of Them.
Mean
Two
Mind
You Would Not Make The Act Of Submission Which Is The Price Of Sanity.
Sanity
Submission
A Hideous Ecstasy Of Fear And Vindictiveness, A Desire To Kill, To Torture, To Smash Faces In With A Sledge Hammer, Seemed To Flow Through The Whole Group Of People Like An Electric Current, Turning One Even Against One's Will Into A Grimacing, Screaming Lunatic. And Yet The Rage That One Felt Was An Abstract, Undirected Emotion Which Could Be Switched From One Object To Another Like The Flame Of A Blowlamp.
Flames
People
Desire
No One Can Look Back On His Schooldays And Say With Truth That They Were Altogether Unhappy.
Learning
Unhappy
Looks
Never Have Ideas About Children, And Never Have Ideas For Them.
Teacher
Children
Ideas
The Mistake You Make, Don't You See,is In Thinking One Can Live In A Corrupt Society Without Being Corrupt Oneself. After All, What Do You Achieve By Refusing To Make Money? You're Trying To Behave As Though One Could Stand Right Outside Our Economic System. But One Can't. One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing. One Can't Put Things Right In A Hole-and-corner Way, If You Take My Meaning.
Mistake
Thinking
Trying
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!
Average
Class
Soul
Envy Is A Horrible Thing. It Is Unlike All Other Kinds Of Suffering In That There Is No Disguising It, No Elevating It Into Tragedy. It Is More Than Merely Painful, It Is Disgusting.
Envy
Suffering
Tragedy
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
Joyce Is A Poet And Also An Elephantine Pedant.
Pedants
Poet
Joyce
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
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
Apparently Nothing Will Ever Teach These People That The Other 99 % Of The Population Exist.
People
Population
Teach
People Invent New Machines And Improve Existing Ones Almost Unconsciously, Rather As A Somnambulist Will Go Walking In His Sleep. The Interesting Puzzle In Our Times Is That We So Willingly Sleepwalk Through The Process Of Reconstituting The Conditions Of Human Existence.
Sleep
People
Interesting
All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.
Humans
Human Relations
Human Relationships
Scientific Education For The Masses Will Do Little Good, And Probably A Lot Of Harm, If It Simply Boils Down To More Physics, More Chemistry, More Biology, Etc To The Detriment Of Literature And History. Its Probable Effect On The Average Human Being Would Be To Narrow The Range Of His Thoughts And Make Him More Than Ever Contemptuous Of Such Knowledge As He Did Not Possess.
Average
Lefties
Would Be
Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.
Two
Evil
Choices
Power Is In Tearing Human Minds To Pieces And Putting Them Together Again In New Shapes Of Your Own Choosing.
Together Again
Mind
Pieces
War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.
Peace
War
Intelligent
Whatever Is Funny Is Subversive, Every Joke Is Ultimately A Custard Pie... A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.
Funny
Dirty
Naughty
There Is No Such Thing As A Naval Dictatorship.
Naval
Dictatorship
I Did Try Very Hard To Tell The Whole Truth Without Violating My Literary Instincts.
Trying
Instinct
Hard
The Process [of Mass-media Deception] Has To Be Conscious, Or It Would Not Be Carried Out With Sufficient Precision, But It Also Has To Be Unconscious, Or It Would Bring With It A Feeling Of Falsity And Hence Of Guilt.... To Tell Deliberate Lies While Genuinely Believing In Them, To Forget Any Fact That Has Become Inconvenient, And Then, When It Becomes Necessary Again, To Draw It Back From Oblivion For Just So Long As It Is Needed, To Deny The Existence Of Objective Reality And All The While To Take Account Of The Reality Which One Denies All This Is Indispensably Necessary.
Truth
Lying
Believe
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
The Totalitarian States Can Do Great Things, But There Is One Thing They Cannot Do: They Cannot Give The Factory-worker A Rifle And Tell Him To Take It Home And Keep It In His Bedroom. That Rifle, Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Laborer's Cottage, Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.
Jobs
Wall
Home
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
The Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil, And It Followed That Any Past Or Future Agreement With Him Was Impossible.
Past
Agreement
Evil
Patriotism Is Usually Stronger Than Class Hatred, And Always Stronger Than Internationalism.
Class
Hatred
Patriotism
Football, A Game In Which Everyone Gets Hurt And Every Nation Has Its Own Style Of Play Which Seems Unfair To Foreigners.
Football
Hurt
Games
The English Are Probably More Capable Than Most Peoples Of Making Revolutionary Change Without Bloodshed. In England, If Anywhere,it Would Be Possible To Abolish Poverty Without Destroying Liberty.
Liberty
Would Be
Poverty
Despotic Governments Can Stand 'moral Force' Till The Cows Come Home; What They Fear Is Physical Force.
Home
Government
Cows
However Much You Deny The Truth, The Truth Goes On Existing.
Goes On
Deny
Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.
Sports
War
Squash
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
There Are Some Situations From Which One Can Only Escape By Acting Like A Devil Or A Lunatic.
Funny
Clever
Smart
Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.
Pain
Hatred
Sorrow
It Was Only A Hopeless Fantasy, It Passed Like An April Day, But A Look And A Word And The Dreams They Stirred They Have Stolen My Heart Away.
Dream
Heart
Looks
...every Human Being Is Doomed To Die, Which Is The Greatest Of All Failures.
Humans
Doomed
Dies
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
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.
Elements
Consideration
Capacity
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 Have Turned Into Heresies Which It Is Actually Becoming Dangerous To Utter.
Gun
Men
Bully
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
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
The Modern Writer Who Has Influenced Me Most Is W. Somerset Maugham .
Modern
Frills
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
Revolutions Only Effect A Radical Improvement When The Masses Are Alert And Know How To Chuck Out Their Leaders As Soon As The Latter Have Done Their Job.
Jobs
Leader
Revolution
We Of The Sinking Middle Class May Sink Without Further Struggles Into The Working Class Where We Belong, And Probably When We Get There It Will Not Be So Dreadful As We Feared, For, After All, We Have Nothing To Lose.
Fear
Struggle
Class
The Fallacy Is To Believe That Under A Dictatorial Government You Can Be Free Inside
Believe
Government
Fallacy
Antisemitism, For Instance, Is Simply Not The Doctrine Of A Grown-up Person.
Doctrine
Instance
Persons
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.
Country
Dark
Thinking
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
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
. . . 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
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.
Fall
Home
Russia
I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside... There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man.
Men
Weight Loss
Literature
Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.
Responsibility
People
Literature
[you Write Out Of The] Desire To Seem Clever, To Be Talked About, To Be Remembered After Death, Etc., Etc., Etc. It Is Humbug To Pretend This Is Not A Motive And A Strong One.
Strong
Clever
Writing
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
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