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Quotes from As I Please — George Orwell

1903–1950

← All quotes by George Orwell

32 quotes

The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.

As I Please (1943)

Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

As I Please (1943)

‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’

As I Please (1943)

Do remember that dishonesty and cowardice always have to be paid for.

As I Please (1943)

The important thing is to discover which individuals are honest and which are not, and the usual blanket accusation merely makes this more difficult.

As I Please (1943)

It is almost impossible to think without talking.

As I Please (1943)

One of the big failures in human history has been the agelong attempt to stop women painting their faces.

As I Please (1943)

Anyone who knows of a provable instance of colour discrimination ought always to expose it.

As I Please (1943)

Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person.

As I Please (1943)

Having defeated your enemy you have to choose (unless you want another war within a generation) between exterminating him and treating him generously.

As I Please (1943)

Not to have a national anthem would be logical.

As I Please (1943)

But it takes a war to make map-reading popular.

As I Please (1943)

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)

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)

To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel, or both, than to find out what he is really like.

As I Please (1943)

The whole question of evolution seems less momentous than it did, because, unlike the Victorians, we do not feel that to be descended from animals is degrading to human dignity.

As I Please (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)

[Man] is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

As I Please (1943)

I mean that almost nobody seems to feel that an opponent deserves a fair hearing or that the objective truth matters as long as you can score a neat debating point.

As I Please (1943)

Attribution

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