Ten George Orwell Quotes on ‘Truth’


Mini Bio: Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)

Eric Arthur Blair (better known by the pseudonym, George Orwell) was a renowned English novelist, essayist, journalist, and social critic who employed lucid prose to oppose totalitarianism. He was born into a lower-middle-class family in Bengal on 25th June 1903. His father was a minor British official in the Indian Civil Service, and his mother was the daughter of an unsuccessful French, teak merchant.

Blair was educated in England and left at nineteen to join the Indian Imperial Police Force in Burma. He resigned in 1928 when he was twenty-four to become a writer. He later said he felt guilty about his role as an imperialist in Burma, and he began to turn his attention to the circumstances of oppressed people in his own country too.  

Blair’s work had an early and significant influence on ‘cultural studies’ and ‘post-colonial studies’. His research on unemployment, poverty, and oppression took him from England to France and then, most notably, Spain where he was shot in the throat by the fascist militia. These experiences, his abhorrence of fascism, and his empathy for the oppressed and impoverished shaped his writing.  

Blair died of tuberculosis in London on 21st January 1950. He was forty-six. He is best remembered for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, a prophetic novel about a dystopian future where truth and facts are manipulated by a totalitarian regime whose version of history is constantly changing.  

Today, Blair’s work remains influential and terms he coined such as ‘Orwellian’, ‘Big Brother’, ‘Thought Police’, ‘Proles’, and ‘Unperson’ have been embraced by popular culture.


George Orwell: A Life in Pictures

8 thoughts on “Ten George Orwell Quotes on ‘Truth’”

  1. Thank you so much for sharing with us an interesting and research article. The main subject of this article is about Ten George Orwell Quotes on ‘Truth’. It is truly commendable that you have demonstrated this topic so well in your article. I have learned a lot by reading your article and gained a lot of cognition about it. Of the points mentioned in your article, I like “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. I have read many books written by George Orwell, one of my favorite writers. Especially I read George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 Nobel which taught me a lot and gained knowledge.
    Finally, I enjoyed reading your article and I’d like to share your article in my Facebook group if you give me permission.

    Reply
    • Thanks for taking an interest in this post, Asraful.

      I think Christopher Hitchens, author of ‘Why Orwell Matters’,  hit the nail on the head when he wrote: 

      “He would appear never to have diluted his opinions in the hope of seeing his byline disseminated to the paying customers; this alone is a clue to why he still matters.”

      I’d be grateful if you shared this post with your Facebook Group.

      Cheers, Marika

      Reply
  2. I think that some of the quotes by George were well and truly disturbing because I have not seen a person who writes about power and it’s bad influence in such a way before even in his books too. All the same, I like what he put together and I like his life too. He had some very good works put out.

    Reply
    • Hi Jay,

      I think Orwell is more relevant today than he was when he wrote. How unbelievable his novels must have seemed at the time. Not so today.

      Cheers, Marika

      Reply
  3. Hello, I really like the concept behind this site. George Orwell’s philosophies while ideal still escapes us today. Isn’t it interesting how those who embrace truth are still being persecuted for doing so while back biters and evildoers who enjoy the shadows flourish? This I believe is more prevalent in our political arena but really has not escaped any facet of society.

    Candy Benn

    Reply
    • Thanks, Candy. It’s amazing how often Orwell had the best thing to say about any number of issues we now face.

      Christopher Hitchens, an Orwell scholar, believed that Orwell had an exalted form of common sense.

      Cheers, Marika

      Reply
  4. Thank you for making this page! i will share a bit from Orwell’s _Why I Write_. I hope that it is well-received here. Orwell took a bullet in the throat while soldiering against the Fascists in Spain. She should have aimed at his fingers if they wanted to shut him up. You never know who will stoop to censorship, really. (The essay is short. I recommend it.):

    “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it. It seems to me nonsense, in a period like our own, to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

    What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art’. I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose,”

    [Oddly enough, Orwell had the same political/economic stance as Einstein and MLK Jr,
    And also Bellamy – who was sort of an asshat but at least he managed to write the US Pledge of Allegiance for some boyscout magazine or something. Anywho.. some more Orwell for y’all:]

    “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. The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it. The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history. Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” [various]

    Thanks for making this page!

    Reply

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