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Language Quotes by George Orwell

53 Language quotes by George Orwell

All Language quotes George Orwell’s page

Newspeak is presented as a tool that tries to shrink the space for thought by limiting words. The quotes argue that clear language resists insincerity, that short words are better, and that the meaning should choose the word, not the other way around. They also warn that corrupt language can corrupt thought.

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“The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak”

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Never use a long word where a short one will do.

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“He had moved from thoughts to words, and now from words to actions.”

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“We’re destroying words—scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We’re”

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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

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Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

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If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out

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It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

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[Political] prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked…

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“Prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together…

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To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words… Whoever writes English is…

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If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who…

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“Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the…

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“A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up the details...”

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“You don’t grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world…

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“I dreamed I dwelt in marble halls, And woke to find it true; I wasn't born for an age like this; Was…

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

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Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child's Meccano set. It…

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In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of…

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“The grammar of Newspeak had two outstanding peculiarities. The first of these was an almost complete interchangeability between different parts of speech.…

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The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring…

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“It was merely an a few words of encouragement, the sort of words that are uttered in the din of battle, not…

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The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns,…

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A man may take to drink because he feels himself to he a failure, and then fail all the more completely because…

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Some people have a knack, for example, of being able to tell when someone's lying to them. They may not know what…

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“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. (...) if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in…

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“After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its…

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A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The…

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Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. Never use a long…

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“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in…

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To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is…

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“This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to…

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“It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are…

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“George Orwell, on how to avoid thinking when you speak: You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting…

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“Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of…

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

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“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are…

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The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.

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The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.

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The greatest enemy of clear language is insincerity.

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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…

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“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.…