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George Orwell on Philosophy

1903–1950

← All quotes by George Orwell

6 quotes

Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

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.

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: George Orwell (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.