Quotes by George Orwell

“For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle (home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics) he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavoring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.”

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”

“(Mankind) is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell”

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men”

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”

“Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper”

“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”

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness”

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”

“The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.”

“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”

“One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.”

“Myths which are believed in tend to become true.”

“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“Good writing is like a windowpane”

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”

“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”

“Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.”