Sourced and curated.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

1947

★ 9.4

Novel · Allegory · Dystopian fiction

History is written by the winners.

Animal Farm · 1945

★ 9.1

Article · Newspaper

1944

★ 9.1

WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 7.7

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 7.4

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

1940

★ 7.1

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

1946

★ 7.0

Radio broadcast · Speech · Political speech

If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

1939

★ 7.0

Newspaper

1944

★ 7.0

In war: resolution. In defeat: defiance. In victory: magnanimity. In peace: goodwill.

The Second World War

★ 7.0

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

1940

★ 7.0

This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

1942

★ 7.0

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

★ 7.0

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

1940

★ 6.9

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty-never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.

1940

★ 6.9

Speech

Speech at Harrow School, October 29, 1941 · 1941

★ 5.3

We have not journeyed all this way across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.

Speech to the Canadian Parliament, December 30, 1941 · 1941

★ 5.3

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 4.0

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

1898

★ 3.9

When the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys.

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.

Shooting an Elephant · 1936

★ 3.9

Novel · Allegory · Dystopian fiction

Animal Farm · 1945

★ 3.9

To think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration.

Politics and the English Language · 1946

★ 3.9

The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.9

The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 3.8

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

1943

★ 3.8

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

Good prose is like a windowpane.

1946

★ 3.8

Essay

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

1946

★ 3.8

Personal journal

1949

★ 3.8

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.8

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.8

It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs—and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because as has been said, it is the quality which guarantees all others.

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 3.7

Dictators ride to and fro upon tigers which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

1937

★ 3.7

Letter

1937

★ 3.7

If you had asked me why I had joined the militia I should have answered: "To fight against Fascism," and if you had asked me what I was fighting for, I should have answered: "Common decency."

Homage to Catalonia · 1938

★ 3.7

What is our policy?... To wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.

1940

★ 3.7

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.

1945

★ 3.7

When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases—bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder—one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy... The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved.

Politics and the English Language · 1946

★ 3.7

If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favorable reference to the devil in the House of Commons.

The Second World War · 1950

★ 3.7

Death and sorrow will be the companions of our journey; hardship our garment; constancy and valor our only shield. We must be united, we must be undaunted, we must be inflexible.

1940

★ 3.6

What is our aim?... Victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle.

1940

★ 3.6

We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

1941

★ 3.6

Radio broadcast

Nazi theory indeed specifically denies that such a thing as "the truth" exists.... The implied objective of this line of thought is a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past. If the Leader says of such and such an event, "It never happened"—well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five—well, two and two are five. This prospect frightens me much more than bombs.

1941

★ 3.6

Essay · Anthology · Historical literature

The relative freedom which we enjoy depends of public opinion. The law is no protection. Governments make laws, but whether they are carried out, and how the police behave, depends on the general temper in the country. If large numbers of people are interested in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it; if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.

1943

★ 3.6

Essay · Newspaper · Political literature

Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie...A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack upon morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.

1945

★ 3.6

1941

★ 2.8

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.3

Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.3

"If there is hope," he had written in the diary, "it lies in the proles."

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.3

Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.2

DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 2.2

There are men in the world who derive as stern an exaltation from the proximity of disaster and ruin, as others from success.

1898

★ 2.1

He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 2.1

Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

Down and Out in Paris and London · 1933

★ 2.1

There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.

Homage to Catalonia · 1938

★ 2.1

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.

Homage to Catalonia · 1938

★ 2.1