20 George Orwell Quotes With Sources, and Two He Probably Never Wrote

George Orwell Quotes: Language, Power and Attribution

George Orwell (1903-1950) was one of the most profound social critics of the modern period. Some of his sayings, more than a half a century old, prove the depth of his insight about the future. In his most famous book, 1984 (published in 1949), Orwell predicted many things that characterize today's world.

Some of the following quotes can be found in his well known books, 1984 and Animal Farm (1945). Take a good look at them and you'll be surprised by his awareness of social injustice as well as his sarcasm.

1) “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” (1984) (In the novel the Party slogan reads: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past”.)

2) “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” (1984)

3) “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (1984)

4) “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” (1984)

5) “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” (1984)

6) “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.” (1984)

7) “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.” (1984)

8) “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” (listed in 2016 as from 1984; it is in fact from the essay “Politics and the English Language”, 1946)

9) “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” (1984)

10) “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” (1984)

11) “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” (Animal Farm)

12) “On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” (All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays) — from “The Art of Donald McGill”, Horizon, September 1941 (The Orwell Foundation)

13) “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (Animal Farm)

George Orwell Quotes: Language, Power and Attribution

Animal Farm has been adapted to film twice; the 1954 film was an animated feature and the 1999 film was a TV live action version.
14) “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” (In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950) — from “Reflections on Gandhi”, Partisan Review, 1949 (Partisan Review 16(1), p. 91)

15) “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with 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.” (“Why I Write”, 1946, where the wording is “a long bout of some painful illness”)

16) “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” (“The Freedom of the Press”, Orwell’s 1945 preface to Animal Farm, left out of the book and first published in 1972)

17) “Political language 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)

18) “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” (Widely attributed to Orwell, but no source in his writings has been found, and the Orwell Society has said it does not believe this is an Orwell quote, though the argument is roughly one used in Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

19) “Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” (review of Herbert Read’s A Coat of Many Colours, Poetry Quarterly, winter 1945)

20) “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (Often credited to Orwell, but a 2019 fact check found no trace of it in his novels, essays or letters, and Quote Investigator traced the first attribution to a 1982 book, more than 30 years after his death.)

From a memorable line to a useful question

An arresting quotation deserves more than a quick agreement. Choose one line about power and ask who is speaking, whom they are addressing, and what would count as evidence against the claim. A fictional character's words can illuminate a novel without being the author's direct advice. For quotation reuse, record the work, edition and page; a name printed beneath an image is not a source.

A four-step way to read the collection

Start with the words themselves. Does the line describe something that happens, make a moral judgment or tell a reader what to do? Those are different kinds of statement. A prediction needs different support from a personal preference, while an instruction invites questions about who could reasonably follow it and under what circumstances.

Next, examine the speaker. In a novel, a sentence may belong to a character whose view is incomplete, self-serving or deliberately disturbing. Extracting the sentence can remove the very distance between character and author that gives the passage its force. In an essay or interview, the surrounding question and paragraph can matter just as much. The same wording can read differently once the reader knows what it answers.

Then consider the terms. Words such as truth, freedom and power are memorable partly because they can mean different things in different arguments. Select one and write down what it appears to mean in the chosen line. Would the statement still work if it referred to a personal relationship rather than a state, or to a private belief rather than a public record? This is a way of examining the idea, not a claim that Orwell intended every possible application.

Finally, return to the source. A useful citation connects exact wording with an identifiable work and location. A quotation image, an unsourced compilation and a repeated attribution can all lead a search in the right direction, but none is a substitute for that connection. If the origin remains unresolved, label the line as attributed rather than making certainty grow through repetition.

For a group discussion, give two readers the same saying. Ask one to explain its strongest interpretation and the other to describe a situation in which it would be misleading. Then let them revise their accounts after hearing each other. The exercise keeps a quotation from becoming a slogan that merely rewards agreement. A strong line can survive a difficult question; an appealing but weak line may reveal the assumptions it needs.

The collection can therefore be used as a route into reading, rather than as a replacement for it. Save the lines that raise questions as well as the ones that feel reassuring. Those questions give you a reason to explore the work behind the name and to distinguish an author's argument from the many modern uses of an author's reputation.

Explore the related article: Luther Standing Bear Quotes: Reading a Lakota Writer Carefully.

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