Background Image

...

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.

-George Orwell

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

Totalitarianism, However, Does Not

George Orwell

...

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.

Views: 71691

Topic

More From George Orwell

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.

Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Orthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.

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.

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.

In All The Useful Arts The World Is Either Standing Still Or Going Backwards.

Political Language... Is Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable, And To Give An Appearance Of Solidity To Pure Wind.

To Walk Through The Ruined Cities Of Germany Is To Feel An Actual Doubt About The Continuity Of Civilization.

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

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.

The People Will Believe What The Media Tells Them They Believe.

One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing.

There Is No Such Thing As A Naval Dictatorship.

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

One Does Not Establish A Dictatorship In Order To Safeguard A Revolution; One Makes A Revolution In Order To Establish A Dictatorship.

Take Pleasure In The Impact Of One Sound On Another.

History Has To Move In A Certain Direction, Even If It Has To Be Pushed That Way By Neurotics.

Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.

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.

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.

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.

But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother.

Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.

And The Bigger The Fall, The Bigger The Joke. It Would Be Better Fun To Throw A Custard Pie At A Bishop Than At A Curate.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent.

. . . It Is A Corrupting Thing To Live One's Real Life In Secret. One Should Live With The Stream Of Life, Not Against It.

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.

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.

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

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.

Within Certain Limits, It Is Actually True That The Less Money You Have, The Less You Worry.

Men Can Only Be Happy When They Do Not Assume That The Object Of Life Is Happiness.

One Cannot Really Be A Catholic And Grown Up.

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.

The Mass Of The Rich And The Poor Are Differentiated By Their Incomes And Nothing Else,and The Average Millionaire Is Only The Average Dishwasher Dressed In A New Suit.

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

Figures Of Speech

I Loathed The Game, And Since I Could See No Pleasure Or Usefulness In It, It Was Very Difficult For Me To Show Courage At It. Football, It Seemed To Me, Is Not Really Played For The Pleasure Of Kicking A Ball About, But Is A Species Of Fighting.

Every Line Of Serious Work That I Have Written Since 1936 Has Been Written, Directly Or Indirectly Against Totalitarianism And For Democratic Socialism As I Understand It.

Democratic Socialism

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

For A Second, Two Seconds, They Had Exchanged An Equivocal Glance, And That Was The End Of The Story. But Even That Was A Memorable Event, In The Locked Loneliness In Which One Had To Live.

The Penguin Books Are Splendid Value For Sixpence, So Splendid That If Other Publishers Had Any Sense They Would Combine Against Them And Suppress Them.

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.

It Is Brought Home To You...that It Is Only Because Miners Sweat Their Guts Out That Superior Persons Can Remain Superior.

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.

Tragedy, He Precieved, Belonged To The Ancient Time, To A Time When There Were Still Privacy, Love, And Friendship, And When The Members Of A Family Stood By One Another Without Needing To Know The Reason.

Love And Friendship

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

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.

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

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

In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy But Always Against One's Own Body.

Real Power Is Achieved When The Ruling Class Controls The Material Essentials Of Life, Granting And Withholding Them From The Masses As If They Were Privileges.

Beauty Is Meaningless Until It Is Shared.

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.

The Only Thing For Which We Can Combine Is The Underlying Ideal Of Socialism; Justice And Liberty. But It Is Hardly Strong Enough To Call This Ideal Underlying. It Is Almost Completely Forgotten. It Has Been Buried Beneath Layer After Layer Of Doctnaire Priggishness, Party Squabbles And Half-backed Progressivism Until It Is Like A Diamond Hidden Under A Monition Of Dung. The Job Of The Socialist Is To Get It Out Again. Justice And Liberty! Those Are The Words That Have Got To Ring Like A Bugle Across The World.

The Paperweight Was The Room He Was In, And The Coral Was Julia's Life And His Own, Fixed In A Sort Of Eternity At The Heart Of The Crystal.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

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

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

No One Can Look Back On His Schooldays And Say With Truth That They Were Altogether Unhappy.

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One. At One Time It Had Been A Sign Of Madness To Believe That The Earth Goes Round The Sun; Today, To Believe The Past Is Inalterable. He Might Be Alone In Holding That Belief, And If Alone, Then A Lunatic. But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

Men Are Only As Good As Their Technical Development Allows Them To Be.

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.

It Is Almost Universally Felt That When We Call A Country Democratic We Are Praising It; Consequently, The Defenders Of Every Kind Of Regime Claim That It Is A Democracy, And Fear That They Might Have To Stop Using The Word If It Were Tied Down To Any One Meaning.

By The Time You Have Perfected Any Style Of Writing, You Have Always Outgrown It.

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?

The Smell Of Her Hair, The Taste Of Her Mouth, The Feeling Of Her Skin Seemed To Have Got Inside Him, Or Into The Air All Round Him. She Had Become A Physical Necessity.

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.

Between Pigs And Human Beings There Was Not And There Need Not Be Any Clash Of Interest Whatsoever.

There Are Books That One Reads Over And Over Again, Books That Become Part Of The Furniture Of One's Mind And Alter One's Whole Attitude To Life, Books That One Dips Into But Never Reads Through, Books That One Reads At A Single Sitting And Forgets A Week Later.

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.

For If Leisure And Security Were Enjoyed By All Alike, The Great Mass Of Human Beings Who Are Normally Stupefied By Poverty Would Become Literate And Would Learn To Think For Themselves; And When Once They Had Done This, They Would Sooner Or Later Realise That The Privileged Minority Had No Function, And They Would Sweep It Away. In The Long Run, A Hierarchical Society Was Only Possible On A Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance.

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.

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.

Huge Events Like The Ukraine Famine Of 1933, Involving The Deaths Of Millions Of People, Have Actually Escaped The Attention Of The Majority Of English Russophiles.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

My Best Fishing-memory Is About Some Fish That I Never Caught.

Some Hams Hanging In The Kitchen Were Taken Out For Burial

There, Comrades, Is The Answer To All Our Problems. It Is Summed Up In A Single Word-- Man

We Control Matter Because We Control The Mind. Reality Is Inside The Skull.

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.

A Plongeur Is A Slave, And A Wasted Slave, Doing Stupid And Largely Unnecessary Work. He Is Kept At Work, Ultimately, Because Of A Vague Feeling That He Would Be Dangerous If He Had Leisure. And Educated People, Who Should Be On His Side, Acquiesce In The Process, Because They Know Nothing About Him And Consequently Are Afraid Of Him.

No One Is Patriotic About Taxes.

When I Sit Down To Write A Book, I Do Not Say To Myself, 'i Am Going To Produce A Work Of Art.' I Write It Because There Is Some Lie That I Want To Expose, Some Fact To Which I Want To Draw Attention, And My Initial Concern Is To Get A Hearing.

The Primary Aim Of Modern Warfare ... Is To Use Up The Products Of The Machine Without Raising The General Standard Of Living.

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

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.

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.

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

In The End I Worked Out An Anarchistic Theory That All Government Is Evil, That The Punishment Always Does More Harm Than The Crime And That People Can Be Trusted To Behave Decently If Only You Will Let Them Alone.

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.

When You Meet Anyone In The Flesh You Realize Immediately That He Is A Human Being And Not A Sort Of Caricature Embodying Certain Ideas. It Is Partly For This Reason That I Don't Mix Much In Literary Circles, Because I Know From Experience That Once I Have Met And Spoken To Anyone I Shall Never Again Be Able To Feel Any Intellectual Brutality Towards Him, Even When I Feel I Ought To - Like The Labour M.p.s Who Get Patted On The Back By Dukes And Are Lost Forever More.

It's Frightful That People Who Are So Ignorant Should Have So Much Influence.

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.

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

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.

How Could You Communicate With The Future? It Was Impossible. Either The Future Would Resemble The Present In Which Case It Would Not Listen To Him, Or It Would Be Different From It, And His Predicament Would Be Meaningless.

In My Opinion, Nothing Has Contributed So Much To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country And That Every Act Of Its Rulers Must Be Excused, If Not Imitated. And So For The Last Ten Years, I Have Been Convinced That The Destruction Of The Soviet Myth Was Essential If We Wanted A Revival Of The Socialist Movement.

Socialist Countries

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.

If You Kept The Small Rules, You Could Break The Big Ones.

Looking At The World As A Whole, The Drift For Many Decades Has Been Not Towards Anarchy But Towards The Reimposition Of Slavery. We May Be Heading Not For General Breakdown But For An Epoch As Horribly Stable As The Slave Empires Of Antiquity.

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.

The Typical Socialist... A Prim Little Man With A White-collar Job, Usually A Secret Teetotaler And Often With Vegetarian Leanings.

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

Good Prose Should Be Transparent, Like A Window Pane.

Only Old Benjamin Professed To Remember Every Detail Of His Long Life And To Know That Things Never Had Been, Nor Ever Could Be Much Better Or Much Worse--hunger, Hardship, And Disappointment Being, So He Said, The Unalterable Law Of Life.

A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outline And Covering Up All The Details. The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity. When There Is A Gap Between One's Real And One's Declared Aims, One Turns As It Were Instinctively To Long Words And Exhausted Idioms, Like A Cuttlefish Spurting Out Ink. In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics'. All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred, And Schizophrenia. When The General Atmosphere Is Bad, Language Must Suffer.

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.

...every Human Being Is Doomed To Die, Which Is The Greatest Of All Failures.

Do You Remember Writing In Your Diary," He Said, "that It Did Not Matter Whether I Was A Friend Or An Enemy, Since I Was At Least A Person Who Understood You And Could Be Talked To? You Were Right. I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

And If All Others Accepted The Lie Which The Party Imposed—if All Records Told The Same Tale—then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth. 'who Controls The Past' Ran The Party Slogan, 'controls The Future: Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

A Sahib Has Got To Act Like A Sahib; He Has Got To Appear Resolute, To Know His Own Mind And Do Definite Things.

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.

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.

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

It Was Like Swimming Against A Current That Swept You Backwards However Hard You Struggled, And Then Suddenly Deciding To Turn Round And Go With The Current Instead Of Opposing It. Nothing Had Changed Except Your Own Attitude: The Predestined Thing Happened In Any Case.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor. War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces, Or Pouring Into The Stratosphere, Or Sinking In The Depths Of The Sea, Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable, And Hence, In The Long Run, Too Intelligent.

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.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor.

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.

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

For Weeks Past He Had Been Making Ready For This Moment, And It Had Never Crossed His Mind That Anything Would Be Needed Except Courage. The Actual Writing Would Be Easy. All He Had To Do Was To Transfer To Paper The Interminable Restless Monologue That Had Been Running Inside His Head, Literally For Years.

To Accept An Unorthodoxy Is Always To Inherit Unresolved Contradictions

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

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.

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.

Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.

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.

No One Believes More Firmly Than Comrade Napoleon That All Animals Are Equal. He Would Be Only Too Happy To Let You Make Your Decisions For Yourselves. But Sometimes You Might Make The Wrong Decisions, Comrades, And Then Where Should We Be?

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.

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.

History Has Stopped. Nothing Exists Except An Endless Present In Which The Party Is Always Right.

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.

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.

It Is Deliberate Policy To Keep Even The Favoured Groups Somewhere Near The Brink Of Hardship, Because A General State Of Scarcity Increases The Importance Of Small Privileges And Thus Magnifies The Distinction Between One Group And Another.

The Choice For Mankind Lies Between Freedom And Happiness And For The Great Bulk Of Mankind, Happiness Is Better.

Freedom And Happiness

The Atom Bombs Are Piling Up In The Factories, The Police Are Prowling Through The Cities, The Lies Are Streaming From The Loudspeakers, But The Earth Is Still Going Round The Sun.

As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.

England Is The Most Class-ridden Country Under The Sun. It Is A Land Of Snobbery And Privilege, Ruled Largely By The Old And Silly.

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.

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

Poverty Is Spiritual Halitosis.

Never Have Ideas About Children, And Never Have Ideas For Them.

It's A Wonderful Feeling To Have A Niece Like You Because You Are Always So Dear You Are So Dear No Matter The Year But All Throughout Each Day Of The Year There Could Hardly Be A Town In The South Of England Where You Could Throw A Brick Without Hitting The Niece Of A Bishop.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Would Sooner Be A Foreigner In Spain Than In Most Countries. How Easy It Is To Make Friends In Spain!

I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside... There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man.

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.

The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To Be A Failure, But Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks.

The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.

One Defeats A Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.

Snobbishness, Like Hypocrisy, Is A Check Upon Behaviour Whose Value From A Social Point Of View Has Been Underrated.

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

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

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

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.

In Philosophy, Or Religion, Or Ethics, Or Politics, Two And Two Might Make Five, But When One Was Designing A Gun Or An Aeroplane They Had To Make Four.

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

Do You Begin To See, Then, What Kind Of World We Are Creating? It Is The Exact Opposite Of The Stupid Hedonistic Utopias That The Old Reformers Imagined. A World Of Fear And Treachery And Torment, A World Of Trampling And Being Trampled Upon, A World Which Will Grow Not Less But More Merciless As It Refines Itself. Progress In Our World Will Be Progress Toward More Pain.

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic. Women Face Childbed And The Scrubbing Brush, Revolutionaries Keep Their Mouths Shut In The Torture Chamber, Battleships Go Down With Their Guns Still Firing When Their Decks Are Awash.

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.

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

The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.

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

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.

Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

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.

At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.

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.

He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

"a Minority Of One"... The Definition Of Insanity.

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

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.

It Had Become Usual To Give Napoleon The Credit For Every Successful Achievement And Every Stroke Of Good Fortune. You Would Often Hear One Hen Remark To Another, "under The Guidance Of Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I Have Laid Five Eggs In Six Days" Or Two Cows, Enjoying A Drink At The Pool, Would Exclaim, "thanks To The Leadership Of Comrade Napoleon, How Excellent This Water Tastes!".

The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

The Aim Of A Joke Is Not To Degrade The Human Being, But To Remind Him That He Is Already Degraded.

Now He Had Recognized Himself As A Dead Man It Became Important To Stay Alive As Long As Possible.

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.

Gordon Eyed Them With Inert Hatred. At This Moment He Hated All Books, And Novels Most Of All. Horrible To Think Of All That Soggy, Half-baked Trash Massed Together In One Place.

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.

You Are A Slow Learner, Winston." "how Can I Help It? How Can I Help But See What Is In Front Of My Eyes? Two And Two Are Four." "sometimes, Winston. Sometimes They Are Five. Sometimes They Are Three. Sometimes They Are All Of Them At Once. You Must Try Harder. It Is Not Easy To Become Sane.

The Weariness Of The Cell Is The Vigour Of The Organism.

The Object Of Power Is Power.

Sanity Was Statistical. It Was Merely A Question Of Learning To Think As They Thought.

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

No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal Without Cause.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule, Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils.

... 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.

All Art Is Propaganda.

Politically, Swift Was One Of Those People Who Are Driven Into A Sort Of Perverse Toryism By The Follies Of The Progressive Party Of The Moment.

Reality Is Inside The Skull.

Trending Author

William Gurnall

Category