George Orwell Quotes

The minute you try to talk business with him he takes the attitude that he is a gentleman and a scholar, and the moment you try to approach him on the level of his moral integrity he starts to talk business.

I have yet to meet a man as fond of high moral conduct as he is of outward appearances.

When a fellow says, 'It ain't the money but the principle of the thing,' it's the money.

Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.

In England the only homage which they pay to Virtue - is hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is an homage that vice renders to virtue.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

Cheating is only cheating when you get caught.

Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.

We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

I believe in helping our fellow man in need. I believe that reaching into your own pockets to help someone in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into somebody else's pockets to help your fellow man in need is despicable. And, or those of us who are Christians, I'm very sure that when God gave Moses the commandment Thou Shalt Not Steal, he did not mean ...unless you get a majority vote in Congress.

One of the greatest artifices the devil uses to engage men in vice and debauchery, is to fasten names of contempt on certain virtues, and thus fill weak souls with a foolish fear of passing for scrupulous, should they desire to put them in practice.

Freedom, Truth, Honour — you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.

Honor is the only really good disguise for an occasional act of dishonor.

It is dishonorable to say one thing and think another; how much more dishonorable to write one thing and think another.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

If I should go out of church whenever I hear a false statement I could never stay there five minutes. But why come out? The streetis as false as the church, and when I get to my house, or to my manners, or to my speech, I have not got away from the lie.

In the 'bullshit department' a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman.

What we take for virtue is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry knows how to arrange.

If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but greed.

I tell lies sometimes. The last time I lied was a year ago. I absolutely detest lying. You could say that lying and silence are the two greatest sins of present day society. Actually, I lie a lot, and I'm always clamming up.