George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair, who used the pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is marked by lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 June 1903
CityMotihari, India
beds men night ready rough safe stand visit
We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
men
Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
establish power safeguard
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
people
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
cannot follies freed necessary remark simplify speak stupid stupidity worst
If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself.
boot face human imagine vision
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever.
account gives good himself inside life man reveals series simply since trusted viewed
An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. 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.
attempting community depends deprive past people rewrite scenario
This is a kind of Orwellian scenario of attempting to deprive a people of a sense of past and a sense of community on which it depends and to rewrite history,
abolish aim change conscious create crushed daily drudgery high lives low men middle outside places remain shall society
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 intermittenly conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.
safety soul together
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.
wish human-life humans
I have no wish to take life, not even human life
people population teach
Apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99 percent of the population exist.
years knowing together
We may be together for another six months—a year—there’s no knowing. At the end we’re certain to be apart. Do you realize how utterly alone we shall be?
taken kitchen ham
Some hams hanging in the kitchen were taken out for burial