George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair who was born in India in 1903, and died in London in January 1950 at the young age of 46. Orwell was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is notable for its lucid prose, awareness of social injustice, opposition to totalitarianism, and commitment to democratic socialism.
These cynical observations of life created by George Orwell give a small insight into his thinking.
He was one of the most influential English writers of the 20th century, in the fields of literary criticism, poetry, fiction, and polemical journalism.
His best known work is undoubtedly the novel “1984,” in which the phrase “Big Brother is watching you” originated. Of course it has now been popularized by reality TV programs to have a meaning that Orwell could never have envisaged in his wildest nightmares. Or, maybe, he could!
His novella, “Animal Farm” in which animals represented humans, also gave rise to an oft repeated aphorism “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others”.
Although it is now over 60 years since Orwell’s death his work continues to influence popular and political culture, and the term Orwellian has entered the language together with several of his neologisms, including cold war, Big Brother, and thought police.
This small selection of observations show the essence of George Orwell:
- Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
- In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
- People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
- Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.
- Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
- If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
- The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
- Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
- 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.
- All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
- So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.
- As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.
- He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
- The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.
- All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Many of George Orwell’s observations have come to pass.
Was a simply a great writer, or was he also a great prophet? Do you agree with his worldview?
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