George Orwell

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

George Orwell

As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don’t belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool – and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler.

George Orwell

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

George Orwell

At any given moment, there is a sort of all pervading orthodoxy, a general tacit agreement not to discuss large and uncomfortable facts.

George Orwell

Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.

George Orwell

Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.

George Orwell

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. 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

Bombing is not especially inhumane. War itself is inhumane and the bombing plane, which is used to paralyse industry and transport, is a relatively civilised weapon. ‘Normal’ or ‘legitimate’ warfare is just as destructive of inanimate objects and enormously so of human lives.

George Orwell

But the thing that I saw in your face no power can disinherit: No bomb that ever burst shatters the crystal spirit.

George Orwell

By ‘patriotism’ I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life , which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people.

George Orwell