All past oligarchies have fallen from power either because they ossified or because they grew soft. Either they became stupid and arrogant, failed to adjust themselves to changing circumstances, and were overthrown; or they became liberal and cowardly, made concessions when they should have used force, and once again were overthrown.

— George Orwell

George Orwell Quotes

When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.

— George Orwell

By itself,” he said, “pain is not always enough. There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death. But for everyone there is something unendurable – something that cannot be contemplated. Courage and cowardice are not involved. If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope. If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air. It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed.

— George Orwell

The new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians.

— George Orwell

Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall toward the earth’s center.

— George Orwell

At the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him, and the taking of minor risks suddenly seemed stupid.

— George Orwell

If men would behave decently, the world would be decent.

— George Orwell

Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant.

— George Orwell

It was bliss, it was eternity.

— George Orwell

It returned to-night, for just a little while-just as long as it takes to smoke two cigarettes. With smoke tickling his lungs, he abstracted himself from the mean and actual world. He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.

— George Orwell

But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimetre nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

— George Orwell

Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible. You will never have anything to sustain you except the idea.

— George Orwell

At the sight of the words I love you the desire to stay alive had welled up in him.

— George Orwell

The more the Party is powerful, the less it will be tolerant: the weaker the opposition, the tighter the despotism.

— George Orwell

Even a single taboo can have an all-round crippling effect upon the mind, because there is always the danger that any thought which is freely followed up may lead to the forbidden thought.

— George Orwell

Everything’s streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler’s keeping for you.

— George Orwell

He really didn’t want his job. He didn’t want to work again; all he wanted was to sink, sink, effortless, down into the mud.

— George Orwell

Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway cuttings smothered in wildflowers... the red buses, the blue policemen – all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs.

— George Orwell

All he wanted was to get home quickly, and then sit down and be quiet.

— George Orwell

En otras palabras: defender la democracia incluye destruir todo pensamiento independiente.

— George Orwell

Do you believe in God, Winston?” “No.” “Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?” “I don’t know. The spirit of Man.

— George Orwell
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