Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
George Orwell Quotes
CourageSacrificeSecurity We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.
TraditionLegacyDeclineAdaptation Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.
LanguageCollaborationCreativityPracticality Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.
TragedyStruggleResilienceNobilityFortitude A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.
WarAggressionCompetitionRuthlessness Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
BeliefIntegrityMorality If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?
WritingSelf-EffacementClarity It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.
HappinessPurposePerspective Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
PoliticsPervasivenessCorruption In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.
DeceptionDualityOppressionControlManipulation War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Human EqualitySocietal Progress No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
ControlPastFutureInfluence Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
SurveillanceTyrannyCensorshipPowerDanger As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.
Human ResponsibilitySecular EthicsMoral FrameworkHuman ProgressRejection of Supernatural Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.
OppressionControlSocietyIntelligence War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.
GreedPower DynamicsWealthExploitationConflict War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.
PerceptionMedia Accuracy Early in life I had noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper.
TruthMisinformationDecayHistorical DistortionWorldview The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
IdealsGovernanceIdentityLanguageApproval It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
IgnoranceNaivetyRiskConsequence So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.
LoveConditional LoveMutuality of FeelingsImbalance in RelationshipsEmpathy One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
ResponsibilityHonestyCommitmentBurdenIntegrity Prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feeling whatever.
IntelligenceRestatementObviousness Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
Emotional ExpressionChildhoodVulnerabilityInstinct Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
ViolenceNon-ViolenceDependency Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.
PropagandaConflictDeceptionHypocrisy All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
HypocrisyAdherenceRepresentation As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
FreedomTruthIntellectual Freedom Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
ProgressRealismPatience Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
TruthDutyIntelligenceClarity We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.
Technical DevelopmentPotentialCapability Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.
FreedomResponsibilityTruthCourage Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
Language DecayPolitical InstabilityCultural DeclineRevitalization Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.
HumorRebellionSubversion Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.