Bob > Bob's Quotes

“If you don't like someone's story, write your own.”
― Chinua Achebe

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”
― Chinua Achebe

“My weapon is literature
”
― Chinua Achebe

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
― George Orwell, 1984

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

“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Big Brother is Watching You.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”
― George Orwell

“Sanity is not statistical.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information.”
― George Orwell, Why I Write

“That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.”
― George Orwell

“Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.”
― George Orwell

“When I was a child, adults would tell me not to make things up, warning me of what would happen if I did. As far as I can tell so far, it seems to involve lots of foreign travel and not having to get up too early in the morning.”
― Neil Gaiman, Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fiction and Illusions

“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 3: Dream Country

“Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.”
― Neil Gaiman

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed.”
― William Gibson

“You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
― Ray Bradbury

“It may be that our role on this planet
is not to worship God--but to create him.”
― Arthur C. Clarke

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible

“Do you know what we call opinion in the absence of evidence? We call it prejudice.”
― Michael Crichton, State of Fear

“If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.”
― Emma Goldman