Shooting an Elephant Quotes

“He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“A story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“The main motive for "non-attachment" is a desire to escape from the pain of living, and above all from love, which, sexual or non-sexual, is hard work.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“At that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.
But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd — seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing — no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the 'natives,' and so in every crisis he has got to do what the 'natives' expect of him... A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant

“The Dickens essay was an attempt to worry away at why he was such a successful writer and is the longest in this collection. But it is infused with the same spirit of personal engagement as everything else. It is that amazing ability to make you believe that you would have felt as he [George Orwell] felt that is his genius.”
― Jeremy Paxman, Shooting an Elephant

“For years i had been resolved - unconsciously at first, but consciously later on - that when once my scholarship was won i would 'slack off' and cram no longer. This resolve, by the way, was so fully carried out that between the ages of thirteen and twenty-two or three i hardly ever did a stroke of avoidable work.”
― George Orwell , Shooting an Elephant and other essays

“Over a period of two or three years the scholarship boys were crammed with learning as cynically as a goose is crammed for Christmas.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays

“The second beating had not hurt very much either. Fright and shame seemed to have anaesthetized me. I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays

“One wants to live, of course, indeed one only stays alive by virtue of the fear of death, but I think now, as I thought then, that it’s better to die violently and not too old. People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has a man invented that even approaches in cruelty some of the commoner diseases? ‘Natural’ death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful. Even at that, it makes a difference if you can achieve it in your own home and not in a public institution.”
― George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays