12 quotes
Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Orthodoxy, of whatever colour, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable". The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else.
Politics and the English Language (1946)
A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.
Politics and the English Language (1946)