Eric Arthur Blair, pen name George Orwell, was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, India. He was a profoundly influential 20th-century English novelist, poet, essayist, and critic. He was renowned for his sharp critiques of totalitarianism, imperialism, and social injustice. His premier achievements include writing the dystopian masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), which introduced enduring concepts such as "Big Brother" and "Orwellian" into political discourse. May these George Orwell quotes and sayings offer you insights to help you see what is in front of you and allow you to make decisions based on your own assessment of reality rather than external influence.
1. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell
2. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” – George Orwell
3. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” – George Orwell
4. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell
5. “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” – George Orwell
6. “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” – George Orwell
7. “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – George Orwell
8. “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” – George Orwell
9. “To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell
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10. “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” – George Orwell
11. “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” – George Orwell
12. “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.” – George Orwell
13. “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” – George Orwell
14. “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.” – George Orwell
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15. “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” – George Orwell
16. “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell
17. “At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves.” – George Orwell
18. “The best books are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell
19. “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” – George Orwell
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20. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” – George Orwell
21. “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 squirting out ink.” – George Orwell
22. “Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.” – George Orwell
23. “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell
24. “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” – George Orwell
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25. “In a time of universal deceit—telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
26. “As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” – George Orwell
27. “Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.” – George Orwell
28. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” – George Orwell
29. “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.” – George Orwell
30. “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” – George Orwell
More Famous George Orwell Quotes
31. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell
32. “There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.” – George Orwell
33. “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?” – George Orwell
34. “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” – George Orwell
35. “Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.” – George Orwell
36. “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” – George Orwell
37. “War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.” – George Orwell
38. “This is the inevitable fate of the sentimentalist. All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality.” – George Orwell
39. “No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.” – George Orwell
40. “It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything—anything—but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.” – George Orwell
41. “Those who abjure violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” – George Orwell
42. “In the face of pain, there are no heroes.” – George Orwell
43. “There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.” – George Orwell
44. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” – George Orwell
45. “To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.” – George Orwell
46. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” – George Orwell
47. “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.” – George Orwell
48. “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” – George Orwell
49. “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” – George Orwell
50. “Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.” – George Orwell
51. “Liberal: a power worshipper without power.” – George Orwell
52. “The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.” – George Orwell
53. “Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.” – George Orwell
54. “I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.” – George Orwell
55. “Myths which are believed in tend to become true.” – George Orwell
56. “To die hating them, that was freedom.” – George Orwell
57. “Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie. A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.” – George Orwell
58. “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell
59. “On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” – George Orwell
60. “That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.” – George Orwell
61. “No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.” – George Orwell
62. “We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.” – George Orwell
63. “To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.” – George Orwell
64. “Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.” – George Orwell
65. “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” – George Orwell
66. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” – George Orwell
67. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.” – George Orwell
68. “You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it.” – George Orwell
69. “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” – George Orwell
70. “It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.” – George Orwell
71. “We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.” – George Orwell
72. “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.” – George Orwell
73. “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” – George Orwell
74. “Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.” – George Orwell
75. “In order to hate imperialism, you have got to be part of it.” – George Orwell
Share these George Orwell Quote about Truth with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.
2. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” – George Orwell
3. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” – George Orwell
4. “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell
5. “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” – George Orwell
6. “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” – George Orwell
7. “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” – George Orwell
8. “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” – George Orwell
9. “To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.” – George Orwell
11. “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” – George Orwell
12. “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.” – George Orwell
13. “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” – George Orwell
14. “So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.” – George Orwell
16. “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – George Orwell
17. “At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves.” – George Orwell
18. “The best books are those that tell you what you know already.” – George Orwell
19. “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” – George Orwell
21. “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 squirting out ink.” – George Orwell
22. “Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.” – George Orwell
23. “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” – George Orwell
24. “We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” – George Orwell
26. “As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.” – George Orwell
27. “Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.” – George Orwell
28. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” – George Orwell
29. “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.” – George Orwell
30. “Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.” – George Orwell
More Famous George Orwell Quotes
31. “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell
32. “There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.” – George Orwell
33. “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?” – George Orwell
34. “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” – George Orwell
35. “Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.” – George Orwell
36. “He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” – George Orwell
37. “War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.” – George Orwell
38. “This is the inevitable fate of the sentimentalist. All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality.” – George Orwell
39. “No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.” – George Orwell
40. “It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything—anything—but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you.” – George Orwell
41. “Those who abjure violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” – George Orwell
42. “In the face of pain, there are no heroes.” – George Orwell
43. “There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.” – George Orwell
44. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.” – George Orwell
45. “To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.” – George Orwell
46. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” – George Orwell
47. “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.” – George Orwell
48. “If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.” – George Orwell
49. “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.” – George Orwell
50. “Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.” – George Orwell
51. “Liberal: a power worshipper without power.” – George Orwell
52. “The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.” – George Orwell
53. “Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.” – George Orwell
54. “I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.” – George Orwell
55. “Myths which are believed in tend to become true.” – George Orwell
56. “To die hating them, that was freedom.” – George Orwell
57. “Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie. A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.” – George Orwell
58. “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell
59. “On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” – George Orwell
60. “That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.” – George Orwell
61. “No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.” – George Orwell
62. “We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.” – George Orwell
63. “To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.” – George Orwell
64. “Man serves the interests of no creature except himself.” – George Orwell
65. “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” – George Orwell
66. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” – George Orwell
67. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.” – George Orwell
68. “You can possess money, or you can despise money; the one fatal thing is to worship money and fail to get it.” – George Orwell
69. “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.” – George Orwell
70. “It is this fear of a supposedly dangerous mob that makes nearly all intelligent people conservative in their opinions.” – George Orwell
71. “We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.” – George Orwell
72. “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.” – George Orwell
73. “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” – George Orwell
74. “Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.” – George Orwell
75. “In order to hate imperialism, you have got to be part of it.” – George Orwell
Share these George Orwell Quote about Truth with your friends, family, and loved ones to inspire them as well.