313 quotes
England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.
As I Please (1943)
And now abideth faith, hope, money, these three; but the greatest of these is money.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
The Americans always go one better on any kind of beastliness, whether it is ice-cream soda, racketeering or theosophy.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery.
Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible.
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception.
Notes on Nationalism (1945)
If I had to make a list of six books which were to be preserved when all others were destroyed, I would certainly put Gulliver's Travels among them.
Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels (1946)
Threats to freedom of speech, writing and action, though often trivial in isolation, are cumulative in their effect and, unless checked, lead to a general disrespect for the rights of the citizen.
In my opinion, nothing has contributed so much to the corruption of the original idea of socialism as the belief that Russia is a socialist country and that every act of its rulers must be excused, if not imitated.
The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.
We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery.
Spending the night out of doors has nothing attractive about it in London, especially for a poor, ragged, undernourished wretch.