The atmosphere of orthodoxy is always damaging to prose, and above all it is completely ruinous to the novel, the most anarchical of all forms of literature.
George Orwell
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
George Orwell
Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism -- robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.
George Orwell
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
George Orwell
In every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him.
George Orwell
Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
George Orwell
Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, and disregard of all the rules.
George Orwell
All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
George Orwell
The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.
George Orwell
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
George Orwell
There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
George Orwell
To see what is in front of one's nose requires a constant struggle.
George Orwell
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
George Orwell
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
George Orwell
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
George Orwell
It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.