Background Image

...

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.

-George Orwell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

There Is A Geographical

George Orwell

...

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.

Views: 9

Topic

More From George Orwell

All True Tea Lovers Not Only Like Their Tea Strong, But Like It A Little Stronger With Each Year That Passes.

There Is Only One Way To Make Money At Writing, And That Is To Marry A Publisher's Daughter.

The Real Division Is Not Between Conservatives And Revolutionaries But Between Authoritarians And Libertarians.

It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

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.

[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.

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.

Hollywood Films

You Believe That Reality Is Something Objective, External, Existing In Its Own Right. You Also Believe That The Nature Of Reality Is Self-evident. When You Delude Yourself Into Thinking That You See Something, You Assume That Everyone Else Sees The Same Thing As You. But I Tell You, Winston, That 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 Paty, Which Is Collective And Immortal.

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.

Comrades," He Said, "here Is A Point That Must Be Settled. The Wild Creatures, Such As Rats And Rabbits–are They Our Friends Or Our Enemies? Let Us Put It To The Vote. I Propose This Question To The Meeting: Are Rats Comrades?" The Vote Was Taken At Once, And It Was Agreed By An Overwhelming Majority That Rats Were Comrades. There Were Only Four Dissentients, The Three Dogs And The Cat, Who Was Afterwards Discovered To Have Voted On Both Sides.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.

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.

Freedom Is The Freedom To Say That Two Plus Two Make Four. If That Is Granted, All Else Follows.

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.

...the Consciousness Of Being At War, And Therefore In Danger, Makes The Handing-over Of All Power To A Small Caste Seem The Natural, Unavoidable Condition Of Survival.

But If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought.

Political Language

The Moralist And The Revolutionary Are Constantly Undermining One Another. Marx Exploded A Hundred Tons Of Dynamite Beneath The Moralist Position, And We Are Still Living In The Echo Of That Tremendous Crash. But Already, Somewhere Or Other, The Sappers Are At Work And Fresh Dynamite Is Being Tamped In Place To Blow Marx At The Moon. Then Marx, Or Somebody Like Him, Will Come Back With Yet More Dynamite, And So The Process Continues, To An End We Cannot Foresee.

But The Proles, If Only They Could Somehow Become Conscious Of Their Own Strength, Would Have No Need To Conspire. They Needed Only To Rise Up And Shake Themselves Like A Horse Shaking Off Flies. If They Chose They Could Blow The Party To Pieces Tomorrow Morning. Surely Sooner Or Later It Must Occur To Them To Do It? And Yet --!

In This Game That We're Playing, We Can't Win. Some Kinds Of Failure Are Better Than Other Kinds, That's All.

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.

Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.

If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.

The Past Is A Curious Thing. It's With You All The Time. I Suppose An Hour Never Passes Without Your Thinking Of Things That Happened Ten Or Twenty Years Ago, And Yet Most Of The Time It's Got No Reality, It's Just A Set Of Facts That You've Learned, Like A Lot Of Stuff In A History Book. Then Some Chance Sight Or Sound Or Smell, Especially Smell, Sets You Going, And The Past Doesn't Merely Come Back To You, You're Actually In The Past. It Was Like That At This Moment.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

I Understand How. I Do Not Understand Why

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.

What Is To Be Expected Of Them Is Not Treachery, Or Physcial Cowardice, But Stupidity, Unconscious Sabotage, An Infallible Instinct For Doing The Wrong Thing.

Of Pain You Could Wish Only One Thing: That It Should Stop. Nothing In The World Was So Bad As Physical Pain. In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

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.

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.

The Cheaper Books Become, The Less Money Is Spent On Books.

The Whole Experience Of Being Hit By A Bullet Is Very Interesting And I Think Worth Describing In Detail.

The Upper Class Desire To Remain So, The Middle Class Wish To Overthrow The Upper Class, And The Lower Class Want A Classless System.

Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking--not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

I'd Like To Start A Religion. That's Where The Money Is.

Her Feelings Were Her Own, And Could Not Be Altered From Outside. It Would Not Have Occurred To Her That An Action Which Is Ineffectual Thereby Becomes Meaningless. If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.

It Is Also True That One Can Write Nothing Readable Unless One Constantly Struggles To Efface One's Own Personality. Good Prose Is Like A Windowpane.

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.

Thoughtcrime Does Not Entail Death: Thoughtcrime Is Death.

The More Intelligent, The Less Sane

Ignorance In 1984

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?

Roughly Speaking, The More One Pays For Food, The More Sweat And Spittle One Is Obliged To Eat With It.... Dirtiness Is Inherent In Hotels And Restaurants, Because Sound Food Is Sacrificed To Punctuality And Smartness.

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.

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.

A Fat Man Is Never So Happy As When He Is Describing Himself As "robust.

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.

There Are Some Things Only Intellectuals Are Crazy Enough To Believe.

[t]he Outcry Against Killing Women, If You Accept Killing At All, Is Sheer Sentimentality.:; Why Is It Worse To Kill A Woman Than A Man?

The Four Great Motives For Writing Prose Are Sheer Egoism, Esthetic Enthusiasm, Historical Impulse, And Political Purpose.

Some Things Are True, Even Though The Party Says They Are True.

When I Joined The Militia I Had Promised Myself To Kill One Fascist - After All, If Each Of Us Killed One They Would Soon Be Extinct.

The Capitalists Owned Everything In The World, And Everyone Else Was Their Slave. They Owned All The Land, All The Houses, All The Factories, And All The Money. If Anyone Disobeyed Them They Could Throw Him Into Prison, Or They Could Take His Job Away And Starve Him To Death. When Any Ordinary Person Spoke To A Capitalist He Had To Cringe And Bow To Him, And Take Off His Cap And Address Him As 'sir'

If You Have No Money, Men Won't Care For You, Women Won't Love You; Won't, That Is, Care For You Or Love You The Last Little Bit That Matters.

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality. In Left-wing Circles It Is Always Felt That There Is Something Slightly Disgraceful In Being An Englishman And That It Is A Duty To Snigger At Every English Institution, From Horse Racing To Suet Puddings. It Is A Strange Fact, But It Is Unquestionably True That Almost Any English Intellectual Would Feel More Ashamed Of Standing To Attention During God Save The King Than Of Stealing From A Poor Box.

It's Not So Much Staying Alive, It's Staying Human That's Important. What Counts Is That We Don't Betray Each Other.

Has It Ever Occurred To You,' He Said, 'that The Whole History Of English Poetry Has Been De-termined By The Fact That The English Language Lacks Rhymes?

The Ideal Set Up By The Party Was Something Huge, Terrible, And Glittering-a World Of Steel And Concrete, Of Monstrous Machines And Terrifying Weapons-a Nation Of Warriors And Fanatics, Marching Forward In Perfect Unity, All Thinking The Same Thoughts And Shouting The Same Slogans, Perpetually Working, Fighting, Triumphing, Persecuting-three Hundred Million People All With The Same Face.

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.

How Right The Working Classes Are In Their "materialism." How Right They Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

The Common People, On The Whole, Are Still Living In The World Of Absolute Good And Evil From Which The Intellectuals Have Long Since Escaped.

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.

Whoever Controls The Image And Information Of The Past Determines What And How Future Generations Will Think; Whoever Controls The Information And Images Of The Present Determines How Those Same People Will View The Past." "he Who Controls The Past Commands The Future. He Who Commands The Future Conquers The Past.

To Do Anything That Suggested A Taste For Solitude, Even To Go For A Walk By Yourself, Was Always Slightly Dangerous. There Was A Word For It In Newspeak: Ownlife.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith—as Mysterious As Faith Itself.

Mysterious Things

Almost As Swiftly As He Had Imagined It, She Had Torn Her Clothes Off, And When She Flung Them Aside It Was With That Same Magnificent Gesture By Which A Whole Civilization Seemed To Be Annihilated.

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.

Every Life Viewed From The Inside Is A Series Of Defeats.

Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking

From The Totalitarian Point Of View, History Is Something To Be Created Rather Than Learned.

But You Could Not Have Pure Love Or Pure Lust Nowadays. No Emotion Was Pure, Because Everything Was Mixed Up With Fear And Hatred. Their Embrace Had Been A Battle, The Climax A Victory. It Was A Blow Struck Against The Party. It Was A Political Act.

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.

The Secret Of A Successful Restaurant Is Sharp Knives.

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

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.

War Is Evil, But It Is Often The Lesser Evil.

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.

A Human Being Is Primarily A Bag For Putting Food Into.

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.

We Know That No One Ever Seizes Power With The Intention Of Relinquishing It.

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.

Writing A Novel Is Agony.

The Two Aims Of The Party Are To Conquer The Whole Surface Of The Earth And To Extinguish Once And For All The Possibility Of Independent Thought. There Are Therefore Two Great Problems Which The Party Is Concerned To Solve. One Is How To Discover, Against His Will, What Another Human Being Is Thinking, And The Other Is How To Kill Several Hundred Million People In A Few Seconds Without Giving Warning Beforehand.

The Men Who Were Well Enough To Stand Had Moved Across The Carriage To Cheer The Italians As They Went Past. A Crutch Waved Out Of The Window; Bandaged Forearms Made The Red Salute. It Was Like An Allegorical Picture Of War; The Trainload Of Fresh Men Gliding Proudly Up The Line, The Maimed Men Sliding Slowly Down, And All The While The Guns On The Open Trucks Making One's Heart Leap As Guns Always Do, And Reviving That Pernicious Feeling, So Difficult To Get Rid Of, That War *is* Glorious After All.

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?

To Be Corrupted By Totalitarianism, One Does Not Have To Live In A Totalitarian Country.

Totalitarianism

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

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.

Who Controls The Past Controls The Future. Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

All Left-wing Parties In The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something Which They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. They Have Internationalist Aims, And At The Same Time They Struggle To Keep Up A Standard Of Life With Which Those Aims Are Incompatible. We All Live By Robbing Asiatic Coolies, And Those Of Us Who Are 'enlightened' All Maintain That Those Coolies Ought To Be Set Free; But Our Standard Of Living, And Hence Our 'enlightenment,' Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue.

Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimetres Inside Your Skull.

And In The General Hardening Of Outlook That Set In ... Practices Which Had Been Long Abandoned ... -- Imprisonment Without Trial, The Use Of War Prisoners As Slaves, Public Executions, Torture To Extract Confessions, The Use Of Hostages And The Deportation Of Whole Populations -- Not Only Became Common Again, But Were Tolerated And Even Defended By People Who Considered Themselves Enlightened And Progressive.

The Secret Of Rulership Is To Combine A Belief In One’s Own Infallibility With A Power To Learn From Past Mistakes.

What Is Not Hereditary Cannot Be Permanent.

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.

We Were Once Told That The Aeroplane Had "abolished Frontiers"; Actually It Is Only Since The Aeroplane Became A Serious Weapon That Frontiers Have Become Definitely Impassable.

In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.

The Fallacy Is To Believe That Under A Dictatorial Government You Can Be Free Inside

I Am Afraid Of Death. You Are Young, So Presumably You're More Afraid Of It Than I Am. Obviously We Shall Put If Off As Long As We Can. But It Makes Very Little Difference. So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

There Is No Swifter Route To The Corruption Of Thought Than Through The Corruption Of Language

No One I Met At This Time -- Doctors, Nurses, Practicantes, Or Fellow-patients -- Failed To Assure Me That A Man Who Is Hit Through The Neck And Survives It Is The Luckiest Creature Alive. I Could Not Help Thinking That It Would Be Even Luckier Not To Be Hit At All.

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.

Reality Is Inside The Skull.

Is The English Press Honest Or Dishonest? At Normal Times It Is Deeply Dishonest. All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News. Yet I Do Not Suppose There Is One Paper In England That Can Be Straightforwardly Bribed With Hard Cash. In The France Of The Third Republic All But A Very Few Of The Newspapers Could Notoriously Be Bought Over The Counter Like So Many Pounds Of Cheese.

He Wears A Mask, And His Face Grows To Fit It.

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.

Lack Of Money Means Discomfort, Means Squalid Worries, Means Shortage Of Tobacco, Means Ever-present Consciousness Of Failure-above All, It Means Loneliness.

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?

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.

It Was Soon Noticed That When Ever There Was Work To Be Done The Cat Could Never Be Found.

Actions Are Held To Be Good Or Bad, Not On Their Own Merits, But According To Who Does Them. There Is Almost No Kind Of Outrage-torture, Imprisonment Without Trial, Assassination, The Bombing Of Civilians-which Does Not Change Its Moral Color When It Is Committed By 'our' Side. The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Atrocities Committed

All Writers Are Vain, Selfish And Lazy, And At The Very Bottom Of Their Motives Lies A Mystery.

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.

Stupidity Was As Necessary As Intelligence, And As Difficult To Attain.

So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

The Main Motive For Nonattachment Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

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.

To A Surprising Extent The War-lords In Shining Armour, The Apostles Of Martial Virtues, Tend Not To Die Fighting When Time Comes. History Is Full Of Ignominious Getaways By The Great And Famous.

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.

It Was Curious To Think That The Sky Was The Same For Everybody, In Eurasia Or Eastasia As Well As Here. And The People Under The Sky Were Also Very Much The Same--everywhere, All Over The World, Hundreds Or Thousands Of Millions Of People Just Like This, People Ignorant Of One Another's Existence, Held Apart By Walls Of Hatred And Lies, And Yet Almost Exactly The Same--people Who Had Never Learned To Think But Were Storing Up In Their Hearts And Bellies And Muscles The Power That Would One Day Overturn The World.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

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.

The Books One Reads In Childhood, And Perhaps Most Of All The Bad And Good Bad Books, Create In One's Mind A Sort Of False Map Of The World, A Series Of Fabulous Countries Into Which One Can Retreat At Odd Moments Throughout The Rest Of Life, And Which In Some Cases Can Survive A Visit To The Real Countries Which They Are Supposed To Represent.

Do You Know Why You’re Here? Shall I Tell You Why We Brought You Here? To Cure You.to Make You Sane.

A Dirty Joke Is Not, Of Course, A Serious Attack On Morality, But It Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion, A Momentary Wish That Things Were Otherwise.

So Long As I Remain Alive And Well I Shall Continue To Feel Strongly About Prose Style, To Love The Surface Of The Earth, And To Take A Pleasure In Solid Objects And Scraps Of Useless Information.

Language Ought To Be The Joint Creation Of Poets And Manual Workers.

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.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself.

Keeping Secrets

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.

For After All, What Is There Behind, Except Money? Money For The Right Kind Of Education, Money For Influential Friends, Money For Leisure And Peace Of Mind, Money For Trips To Italy. Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

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.

Autobiography Is Only To Be Trusted When It Reveals Something Disgraceful.

Never Use A Long Word Where A Short One Will Do.

And Yet, Just For A Moment, What Almost Frightening Power Had Sounded In That Cry From Only A Few Hundred Throats! Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

To Die Hating Them, That Was Freedom.

To Write Or Even Speak English Is Not A Science But An Art. There Are No Reliable Words.... Whoever Writes English Is Involved In A Struggle That Never Lets Up Even For A Sentence.

Records Told The Same Tale, Then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth.

Perhaps It Is Only When People Are Somewhere Near The Starvation Level That They Have Anything To Sing About.

All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News.

When The White Man Turns Tyrant, It Is His Own Freedom That He Destroys

By Using Stale Metaphors, Similes And Idioms, You Save Much Mental Effort, At The Cost Of Leaving Your Meaning Vague, Not Only For Your Reader But For Yourself.

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

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.

Literature Is Doomed If Liberty Of Thought Perishes.

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.

The Clock Struck Half Past Two. In The Little Office At The Back Of Mr. Mckechnie's Bookshop, Gordon--gordon Comstock, Last Member Of The Comstock Family, Aged Twenty-nine And Rather Moth-eaten Already--lounged Across The Table, Pushing A Fourpenny Packet Of Player's Weights Open And Shut With His Thumb.

Take Pleasure In The Impact Of One Sound On Another.

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.

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.

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.

Whatever Goes Upon Two Legs Is An Enemy. Whatever Goes Upon Four Legs, Or Has Wings, Is A Friend.

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.

The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future.

When I See An Actual Flesh-and-blood Worker In Conflict With His Natural Enemy, The Policeman, I Do Not Have To Ask Myself Which Side I Am On.

To Survive It Is Often Necessary To Fight And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself.

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.

Winston Could Not Definitely Remember A Time When His Country Had Not Been At War...war Had Literally Been Continuous, Though Strictly Speaking It Had Not Always Been The Same War. The Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil.

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?

News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.

The Belly Comes Before The Soul.

I Have The Most Evil Memories Of Spain, But I Have Very Few Bad Memories Of Spaniards.

From A Very Early Age, Perhaps The Age Of Five Or Six, I Knew That When I Grew Up I Should Be A Writer. Between The Ages Of About Seventeen And Twenty-four I Tried To Abandon This Idea, But I Did So With The Consciousness That I Was Outraging My True Nature And That Sooner Or Later I Should Have To Settle Down And Write Books.

The Intellectual Is Different From The Ordinary Man, But Only In Certain Sections Of His Personality, And Even Then Not All The Time.

I Often Wondered Whether Any Of The Others Grasped That I Had Done It Solely To Avoid Looking A Fool.

In Oceania At The Present Day, Science, In The Old Sense, Has Almost Ceased To Exist. In Newspeak There Is No Word For 'science.' The Empirical Method Of Thought, On Which All The Scientific Achievements Of The Past Were Founded, Is Opposed To The Most Fundamental Principles Of Ingsoc.

Ignorance And Prejudice Are The Ballast Of Our Ship Of State - However, Ships Without Ballast Are Not Seaworthy And Cannot Sail In The Tempests, Nor Reach A Safe Harbor.

If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out, Always Cut It Out

Figures Of Speech

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.

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me: There Lie They, And Here Lie We Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

The Whole Question Of Evolution Seems Less Momentous Than It Did, Because, Unlike The Victorians, We Do Not Feel That To Be Descended From Animals Is Degrading To Human Dignity.

In A Way, The World-view Of The Party Imposed Itself Most Successfully On People Incapable Of Understanding It. They Could Be Made To Accept The Most Flagrant Violations Of Reality, Because They Never Fully Grasped The Enormity Of What Was Demanded Of Them, And Were Not Sufficiently Interested In Public Events To Notice What Was Happening. By Lack Of Understanding They Remained Sane. They Simply Swallowed Everything, And What They Swallowed Did Them No Harm, Because It Left No Residue Behind, Just As A Grain Of Corn Will Pass Undigested Through The Body Of A Bird.

No Advance In Wealth, No Softening Of Manners, No Reform Or Revolution Has Ever Brought Human Equality A Millimeter Nearer.

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.

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.

The Consequences Of Every Act Are Included In The Act Itself.

A Man Receiving Charity Always Hates His Benefactor- It Is A Fixed Characteristic Of Human Nature

The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, But He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Political Language

Atrocities Committed

If You Are A Man, Winston, You Are The Last Man.

The Idea Really Came To Me The Day I Got My New False Teeth.

High Sentiments Always Win In The End. The Leaders Who Offer Blood, Toil, Tears And Sweat Always Get More Out Of Their Followers Than Those Who Offer Safety And A Good Time. When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic.

His Answer To Every Problem, Every Setback Was “i Will Work Harder!” —which He Had Adopted As His Personal Motto.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout Of Some Painful Illness.

The Catholic And The Communist Are Alike In Assuming That An Opponent Cannot Be Both Honest And Intelligent.

Until They Became Conscious They Will Never Rebel, And Until After They Have Rebelled They Cannot Become Conscious.

A Generation Of The Unteachable Is Hanging Upon Us Like A Necklace Of Corpses.

You Would Not Make The Act Of Submission Which Is The Price Of Sanity.

One Has To Belong To The Intelligentsia To Believe Things Like That: No Ordinary Man Could Be Such A Fool.

You Must Be An Intellectual. A Normal Person Would Never Believe A Thing Like That.

We Shall Meet In The Place Where There Is No Darkness.

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.

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 Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

She Was Very Young...she Still Expected Something From Life, She Did Not Understand That To Push An Inconvenient Person Over A Cliff Solves Nothing.

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

Trending Author

Brittany Murphy

James Whitcomb Riley

Category