313 quotes
What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.
The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorising everyone into conformity.
This is not only dishonest; it also carries a severe penalty with it. If you disregard people's motives, it becomes much harder to foresee their actions.
As I Please (1943)
I always think they're rather charming-looking, the Burmese. They have such splendid bodies! Just think what sights you'd see in England if people went about half naked as they do here!
Burmese Days (1934)
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Social failure, artistic failure, sexual failure - they are all the same. And lack of money is at the bottom of them all.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936)
I think the pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate their pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war, indeed!
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
If one keeps these axioms in mind one can generally see the relevant facts in international affairs through the smoke-screen with which the newspapers surround them.
As I Please (1943)
It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith-as mysterious as faith itself. Like faith, it is ultimately not rooted in logic; it is a change in the climate of the mind.
You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
The lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of Göring’s bombing planes.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
One always abandons something in retreat. Look at Napoleon at the Beresina! He abandoned his whole army.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
In reality it was the Communists above all others who prevented revolution in Spain.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
Ellis was one of those people who constantly nag others to echo their own opinions.
Burmese Days (1934)
Has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?
A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
One cannot really be Catholic & grown-up.
Extracts from a Manuscript Notebook (1949)