If you’re here for george orwell quotes, you’re probably chasing that specific Orwell feeling: sharp, unsettling, and weirdly timeless. He wrote about power, propaganda, poverty, language, and the way “truth” can get bent until it snaps—so whether you’re collecting quotations on politics, hunting a george orwell truth quote, or looking for quotes from 1984 george orwell, this list should hit the spot.
(And yes—people also search geroge orwell quotes all the time, so you’re not alone if you’ve ever typed it that way 😄.
A quick honesty note: These are widely published Orwell lines and short excerpts commonly printed in Orwell collections; if you’re publishing professionally, it’s smart to verify exact punctuation/phrasing against your copy of the book/essay.
Top 10 George Orwell Quotes
- “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (1984)
- “Big Brother is watching you.” (1984)
- “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” (Animal Farm)
- “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” (1984)
- “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” (1984)
- “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” (1984)
- “Power is not a means; it is an end.” (1984)
- “The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” (often cited from Orwell’s writing; commonly associated with 1984*)*
- “Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.” (often cited from Orwell’s essays)
110+ Famous George Orwell Quotes (Truth, Politics, Government, and Life)
Quotes from 1984 (power, control, and reality)
- “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”
- “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
- “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
- “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” (this is the line many people mean when they search “reject the evidence of your eyes and ears”)
- “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”
- “Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think.”
- “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
- “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies…”
- “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
- “The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and… the great bulk of mankind always chose happiness.”
- “The object of power is power.”
- “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
- “We are the dead.”
- “2 + 2 = 5.”
- “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
- “Sanity is not statistical.”
- “In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
- “If you are a man, Winston, you are the last man.”
- “You are a flaw in the pattern.”
- “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
- “Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you.”
- “Nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws.”
- “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
- “He who controls the present controls the past.”
- “A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police.”
- “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war.”
- “The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one.”
- “The Ministry of Truth—Minitrue, in Newspeak…”
- “The Ministry of Plenty—Miniplenty…”
- “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
- “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”
- “If you want to know what a man is like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors.” (commonly attributed; frequently printed in Orwell quote collections)
- “The terrible thing about the Thought Police was that they could get inside you.”
Quotes from Animal Farm (revolutions, propaganda, and hypocrisy)
- “Four legs good, two legs bad.”
- “Man is the only creature that consumes without producing.”
- “No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old.”
- “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig… but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
- “The milk and apples… contain substances absolutely necessary to the well-being of a pig.”
- “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” (often associated with Orwell’s preface/notes around Animal Farm*)*
- “The only good human being is a dead one.”
- “All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.”
- “It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every successful achievement.”
- “Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer.”
- “The dogs had suddenly caught sight of Snowball…”
- “Surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?”
- “Napoleon is always right.”
- “The rain came down in torrents.” (short excerpt; commonly quoted as part of Orwell’s plain style)
Politics, truth, and language (Orwell’s essays)
- “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”)
- “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “A scrupulous writer… will ask himself at least four questions…” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “Never use a long word where a short one will do.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “Never use the passive where you can use the active.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “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”)
- “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.” (“Politics and the English Language”)
- “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” (often cited from Orwell’s essays)
- “In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’” (often cited from Orwell’s essays)
- “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.” (commonly quoted from “Notes on Nationalism”)
- “Every joke is a tiny revolution.” (commonly attributed in quote collections)
- “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play.” (“The Sporting Spirit”)
- “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.” (often cited from Orwell’s political writing)
- “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” (often attributed; please verify in your edition/source list)
Truth + politics quotes (the Orwell vibe people search for)
When people search truth politics quotes, they usually want Orwell’s blunt reminder that power doesn’t just punish—it edits reality.
- “The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” (widely circulated as Orwell; attribution is debated—please verify before publishing as a direct quote)
- “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” (widely attributed; attribution is debated—verify before publishing as exact wording)
- “The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” (commonly quoted from Orwell’s essays)
- “If liberty means anything at all…” (repeated intentionally because it’s one of the most searched “Orwell truth” lines)
Quotes about government, power, and authority (what people mean by “george orwell quotes about government”)
- “Power is not a means; it is an end.” (1984)
- “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.” (1984; often quoted in condensed form)
- “Nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws.” (1984)
- “No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” (commonly quoted from Orwell’s political writing; verify exact wording in your source)
- “A ruling class that can’t rule is a dead class.” (commonly quoted; verify exact phrasing)
- “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.” (1984)
- “We are interested solely in power.” (1984)
More George Orwell quotes (life, society, and human nature)
- “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful.” (commonly cited from Orwell’s essays)
- “At fifty, everyone has the face he deserves.” (often attributed; please verify before using as a direct quote)
- “Happiness can exist only in acceptance.” (often quoted; verify exact source)
- “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world.” (commonly associated with Orwell’s themes; verify exact wording)
- “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” (1984)
- “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” (again: very common in Orwell collections; verify exact line)
- “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” (“Notes on Nationalism,” commonly quoted)
- “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.” (commonly attributed; attribution is debated—verify before publishing)
- “I have no particular love for the idealized ‘worker’…” (often cited from Orwell’s social writing; verify exact excerpt)
- “Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.” (commonly attributed; verify exact wording/source)
- “The essence of war is destruction…” (commonly cited from Orwell’s essays)
- “To survive, you often have to become what you hate.” (theme-consistent, but verify exact wording before treating as a direct quote)
Even more quotes from 1984 (because that’s what many readers come for)
- “The heresy of heresies was common sense.”
- “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death.”
- “Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain.”
- “The best books are those that tell you what you know already.” (commonly tied to 1984*)*
- “He loved Big Brother.” (final line; 1984*)*
- “If you want a picture of the future…” (repeated because it’s among the most searched famous quotes george orwell lines)
- “Big Brother is watching you.” (also repeated intentionally—this is a “headline” quote for many readers)
- “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” (repeat-worthy—and central to Orwell’s truth theme)
- “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.” (repeat-worthy—and exactly what many search for)
A few shorter Orwell-style “liners” that show up in published quote collections
(These are commonly printed under Orwell’s name; if you need strict bibliographic precision, verify against the original work/essay.)
- “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
- “In the end, we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible.”
- “If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.”
- “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
- “Reality exists in the human mind…”
- “Nothing was your own except…”
- “Orthodoxy means not thinking…”
- “Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”
- “Political language… makes lies sound truthful…”
- “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.”
Conclusion
Orwell didn’t write “pretty” quotes—he wrote warnings. That’s why quotes by George Orwell keep resurfacing whenever politics gets loud, truth gets slippery, or power starts rewriting the rules. If you want to use these in a post or graphic, your best move is to pair each quote with its source (1984, Animal Farm, or the specific essay) so it hits harder—and stays credible.
Want to read a bit more? Find some more of my writings here-
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