George Orwell Quotes on War & Peace (18 Quotes)

But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comforable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more of less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

Winston Churchill could not definitely remember a time when his country had not been at war.

The quickest way to end a war is to lose it.

War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.

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

The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad

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.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.