Top 10 George Orwell Quotes

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

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

If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.

Power is not a means; it is an end.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

Top 10 George Orwell Quotes part 2

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

The object of power is power.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.

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

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

The only way to ensure that news is properly reported is to hear it from the horses’ mouths.”

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

In our age, there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues.

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

In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

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

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it.

The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves and traitors are not victims, but accomplices.

There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever.