Thinking Quotes by George Orwell

Using clichés is a substitute for thinking

— George Orwell

Right thinking will be rewarded, wrong thinking punished.

— George Orwell

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept…

— George Orwell

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

— George Orwell

Sanity was statistical. It was merely a question of learning to think as they thought.

— George Orwell

If he thinks he floats off the floor, and if I simultaneously think I see him do it, then the thing happens.

— George Orwell

It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.

— George Orwell

The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.

— George Orwell

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

— George Orwell

We have sunk so low it has become the obligation of every decent, thinking individual to re-state the obvious!

— George Orwell

This life we live nowadays. It's not life, it's stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside…

— George Orwell

Nearly all creators of utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache... whoever…

— George Orwell

They clichés will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at…

— George Orwell

I think I exist,' he said wearily. 'I am conscious of my own identity. I was born, and I shall die. I…

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of…

— George Orwell

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides…

— George Orwell

The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means…

— George Orwell

In this country, intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face ... Unpopular ideas can be silenced,…

— George Orwell

I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very…

— George Orwell

Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, Don't…

— George Orwell

You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is…

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They…

— George Orwell

“The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all…

— George Orwell

The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All…

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of…

— George Orwell

No one I met at this time -- doctors, nurses, practicantes, or fellow-patients -- failed to assure me that a man who…

— George Orwell

I do not think one can assess a writer's motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject matter will be…

— George Orwell

Whoever controls the image and information of the past determines what and how future generations will think; whoever controls the information and…

— George Orwell

Think of something you really care about. Then add hour to hour and calculate the fraction of your life that you've actually…

— George Orwell

I felt as if I was the only person awake in a city of sleepwalkers. That's an illusion, of course. When you…

— George Orwell

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Has it ever occurred to you,…

— George Orwell

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?... Has it ever occurred to you,…

— George Orwell

For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty…

— George Orwell

Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of…

— George Orwell

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

— George Orwell

The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set…

— George Orwell

The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering-a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and…

— George Orwell