313 quotes
People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty to some of the commoner diseases? "Natural" death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.
Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy — or even two orthodoxies, as often happens — good writing stops.
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
It can never permit either the truthful recording of facts or the emotional sincerity that literary creation demands.
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
The issue truth-versus-untruth is as far as possible kept in the background.
The Prevention of Literature (1946)
Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)
By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come.
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)
This business of making people conscious of what is happening outside their own small circle is one of the major problems of our time, and a new literary technique will have to be evolved to meet it.
As I Please (1943)
Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.
As I Please (1943)
Earth is still going round the sun, and neither the dictators nor the bureaucrats, deeply as they disapprove of the process, are able to prevent it.
Mechanisation leads to the decay of taste, the decay of taste leads to demand for machine-made articles and hence to more mechanisation, and so a vicious circle is established.
In a Society in which there is no law, and in theory no compulsion, the only arbiter of behaviour is public opinion. But public opinion, because of the tremendous urge to conformity in gregarious animals, is less tolerant than any system of law.
So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)
Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism.
Notes on Nationalism (1945)
He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.
Down and Out in Paris and London (1933)
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.