“Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”
– 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 of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.”
– George Orwell
“War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.”
– George Orwell
“Oceania was at war with Eurasia therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”
– George Orwell
“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
– George Orwell
“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”
– George Orwell
“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.”
– George Orwell
“War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”
– George Orwell
“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”
– George Orwell
“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
“Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”
– George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
– George Orwell
“To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.”
– George Orwell
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”
– George Orwell
“No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.”
– George Orwell
“For a creative writer possession of the ‘truth’ is less important than emotional sincerity.”
– George Orwell
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
– 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
“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
– George Orwell
“In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”
– George Orwell
“In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
– George Orwell
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
– George Orwell
“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
“Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.”
– George Orwell
“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”
– George Orwell
“Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”
– George Orwell
“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.”
– George Orwell
“Liberal: a power worshipper without power.”
– George Orwell
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
– George Orwell
“If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics – a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage – surely that proves that you are in the right?”
– George Orwell