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11 scarily accurate George Orwell quotes about truth

These quotes from Orwell on Truth, a collection of George Orwell's fiction and non-fiction on this elusive subject, bring his much-needed voice of reason to today's post-truth world.

Think - quote

’You are free to be a drunkard, an idler, a coward, a backbiter, a fornicator; but you are not free to think for yourself.’

crime and truth - quote

’Intellectual honesty is a crime in any totalitarian country; but even in England it is not exactly profitable to speak and write the truth.’

Illusions - quote

‘In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful illusions.’

Liberty - quote

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

imagination - quote

‘The imagination, like certain wild animals, will not breed in captivity.’

Political language - quote

'Political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.’

Truth - quote

‘Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.’

Book - quote

‘No book is genuinely free from political bias.’

‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

Crimestop - quote

‘Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.’

‘Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.’

 

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