"George Orwell"の名言

What he realised, and more clearly as time went on, was that money-worship has been elevated into a religion. Perhaps it is the only real religion-the only felt religion-that is left to us. Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning any longer except failure and success. Hence the profoundly significant phrase, to make good. The decalogue has been reduced to two commandments. One for the employers-the elect, the money priesthood as it were- 'Thou shalt make money'; the other for the employed- the slaves and underlings'- 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.' It was about this time that he came across The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and read about the starving carpenter who pawns everything but sticks to his aspidistra. The aspidistra became a sort of symbol for Gordon after that. The aspidistra, the flower of England! It ought to be on our coat of arms instead of the lion and the unicorn. There will be no revolution in England while there are aspidistras in the windows.

At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation.

But the world itself is only a speck of dust. And man is tiny--helpless! How long has he been in existence? For millions of years the earth was uninhabited.' 'Nonsense. The earth is as old as we are, no older. How could it be older? Nothing exists except through human consciousness.' 'But the rocks are full of the bones of extinct animals--mammoths and mastodons and enormous reptiles which lived here long before man was ever heard of.' 'Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth-century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.

There are books that one reads over and over again, books that become part of the furniture of one’s mind and alter one’s whole attitude to life, books that one dips into but never reads through, books that one reads at a single sitting and forgets a week later:

And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.

A plongeur is a slave, and a wasted slave, doing stupid and largely unnecessary work. He is kept at work, ultimately, because of a vague feeling that he would be dangerous if he had leisure. And educated people, who should be on his side, acquiesce in the process, because they know nothing about him and consequently are afraid of him.

If you hate violence and don't believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.

He said that the education of the young was more important than anything that could be done for those who are already grown up.

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

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

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.

The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

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?

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

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.