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Freedom Quotes by George Orwell

51 Freedom quotes by George Orwell

All Freedom quotes George Orwell’s page

George Orwell writes that freedom means being able to say simple truths, like ‘two plus two makes four.’ He points out that true liberty is more valuable than symbols or slogans, and that societies often choose comfort over freedom. His words warn against hidden control.

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Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up.

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“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”

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Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip.

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“WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY”

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Literature is doomed if liberty of thought perishes.

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Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?

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Freedom is the right to tell others what they don't want to hear.

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To die hating them, that was freedom.

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The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.

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Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious

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“One can be granted intellectual liberty when one has no intellect.”

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Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose

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“That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and for the bulk of mankind happiness was better.”

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Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than just ribbons?

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When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys

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Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual…

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If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books…

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Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than…

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The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism. The issue truth-versus-untruth is…

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“Comrade," said Snowball, "those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the badge of slavery. Can you not understand that liberty…

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The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as…

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“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it.…

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The English are probably more capable than most peoples of making revolutionary change without bloodshed. In England, if anywhere,it would be possible…

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“All throughout the Christian ages, and especially since the French Revolution, the Western world has been haunted by the idea of freedom…

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“That the Party did not seek power for its own ends, but only for the good of the majority. That it sought…

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To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and…

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“Whenever A is oppressing B, it is clear to people of good will that B ought to be independent, but then it…

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“The controversy over freedom of speech and of the press is at bottom a controversy of the desirability, or otherwise, of telling…

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“These books can be read, independently of their time and place, as a strong preventive medicine against the mentality of servility, and…

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“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty…

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“And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those…

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“In that case the current orthodoxy happens to be challenged, and so the principle of free speech lapses. Now, when one demands…

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

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“That the choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness, and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.”

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True freedom is the right to say something that others don't want to hear.

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“Socialism does mean justice and liberty when the nonsense is stripped off it.”

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The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside

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I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

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If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

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More by George Orwell

In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel.:; Up to 1914 you did…

It was given out that the animals there practised cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes, and had their females in common. This was…

“The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running…

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the…

“if you took 1 Corinthians, chapter thirteen, and in every verse wrote 'money' instead of 'charity', the chapter had ten times as much meaning…

Happiness can exist only in acceptance.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became…

“Whitman himself "accepted" a great deal that his contemporaries found unmentionable. For he is not only writing of the prairie, he also wanders through…

“But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Whatever the Party holds to…

“And the people under the sky were also very much the same...everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just…

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally…

Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to…

And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at…

“Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution.…