Orwell on Truth Quotes

“Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a disbelief in the very existence of objective truth.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Free speech is unthinkable. All other kinds of freedom are permitted. You are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face,”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The obvious connection between personal unhappiness and the tendency to easily believe the incredible is the most interesting conclusion of this study.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“It is usually known that newspapers do not say the truth, but it is also known that they cannot tell whoppers.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The ordinary people in the street – partly, perhaps, because they are not sufficiently interested in ideas to be intolerant about them – still vaguely hold that "I suppose everyone's got a right to their own opinion." It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“In medieval Europe the Church dictated what you should believe, but at least it allowed you to retain the same beliefs from birth to death. It didn't tell you to believe one thing on Monday and another on Tuesday. ....In a sense his thoughts are circumscribed, but he passes his whole life within the same framework of thought. His emotions aren't tampered with. Now, with totalitarianism exactly the opposite is true. The peculiarity of the totalitarian state is that though it controls thought, it doesn't fix it. It sets up unquestionable dogmas, and it alters them from day to day. It needs the dogmas, because it needs absolute obedience from its subjects, but it can't avoid the changes, which are dictated by the needs of power politics. It declares itself infallible, and at the same time it attacks the very concept of objective truth.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“One ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you’re freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark it’s stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language—and with variations this is true of all political parties from Conservatives to Anarchist—is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind wind.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The inflated [speaking] style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Tutta la propaganda è menzogna, anche quando dice la verità. E secondo me non è un male, perché uno sappia quello che sta facendo, e perché”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Una placida popolazione di stupidi, che nutrono e accarezzano la loro stupidità, protetti da un quarto di milione di baionette. E' un mondo soffocante, che rende idioti.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“I am not able, and I do not want, completely to abandon the world-view that I acquired in childhood. 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 pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose:
1. Sheer egoism [...] It is humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, a strong one. [...] But there is also the minority of gifted, willful people who are determined to live their own lives to the end, and writers belong in this class.
2. Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.
3. Historical impulse
4. Political purpose”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. (...) ? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The
great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's
real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and
exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such
thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself
is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. (...) ? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to
recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language,
and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal
end.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Already there are countless people who would think it scandalous to falsify a scientific textbook, but would see nothing wrong in falsifying an historical fact. It is at the point where literature and politics cross that totalitarianism exerts its greatest pressure on the intellectual. The exact sciences are not, at this date, menaced to anything like the same extent. This partly accounts for the fact that in all countries it is easier for the scientists than for the writers to line up behind their respective governments.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“The whole of modern European literature — I am speaking of the literature of the past four hundred years — is built on the concept of intellectual honesty, or, if you like to put it that way, on Shakespeare’s maxim, ‘To thine own self be true’. The first thing that we ask of a writer is that he shall not tell lies, that he shall say what he really thinks, what he really feels. The worst thing we can say about a work of art is that it is insincere. And this is even truer of criticism than of creative literature (...)”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Within certain limits, bad thought and bad morals can be good literature. If so great a man as Tolstoy could not demonstrate the contrary, I doubt whether anyone else can either.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“It appears, therefore, that though Tolstoy can explain away nearly everything about Shakespeare, there is one thing that he cannot explain away, and that is his popularity. He himself is aware of this, and greatly puzzled by it. I said earlier that the answer to Tolstoy really lies in something he himself is obliged to say. He asks himself how it is that this bad, stupid and im-moral writer Shakespeare is everywhere admired, and finally he can only explain it as a sort of world-wide conspiracy to pervert the truth.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is “just the same as” or “just as bad as” totalitarianism never take account of this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“And, as western peoples go, the English are very highly differentiated. There is a sort of backhanded admission of this in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often feel more at home in Europe.

When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer, the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals, all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos!”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth

“Yet, after all, some kind of history will be written, and after those who actually remember the war are dead, it will be universally accepted. So for all practical purposes the lie will have become truth.”
― George Orwell, Orwell on Truth