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

Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.

George Orwell

Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.

George Orwell

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

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

George Orwell

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

George Orwell

Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

George Orwell

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

George Orwell

Take pleasure in the impact of one sound on another.

George Orwell

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

George Orwell