George Orwell Quotes

I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.

Only the people can build world history.

We make our own history. The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voices of the people themselves.

Men live in history as never before …. we make and change history minute by minute. History is not the book or the human memory. We do history in the morning and change it after lunch.

History is the record of human society or world civilization, of the changes that take place in the nature of that society … of all the transformations that society undergoes by its very nature.

It has taken us centuries of thought and mockery to shake the medieval system. -- With this in view I have taken as impulses, instincts, or needs certain driving forces in the human species as we know it at present, and argued for such social and economic changes as will give them new, free, and varied expression. To take even this first step towards a happy society is a herculean task. After it has been accomplished, generations to come will see what the creature [us] will do next. We none of us know; and we should be thoroughly on our guard against all those who pretend that they do

History is about what people do within the limits of their landscape, their needs, and their past.

History is a relay of revolutions

The historical method is often deemed conservative, because it traces the gradual and stately growth of our venerable institutions; but it may exercise a precisely opposite influence by showing the gross injustice which was blindly perpetrated during this growth.

Men are not the causers of history. History itself, by a pressure of events, causes men to resort to particular actions.

Rumpole, you must move with the times." "If I don't like the way the times are moving, I shall refuse to accompany them.

Every new generation must rewrite history in its own way.

I suspect that many of the great cultural shifts that prepare the way for political change are largely aesthetic.

When a just cause reaches its flood-tide...whatever stands in its way must fall before its overwhelming force.

Men make history, not the other way around.

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?

I left the government because I saw the only way to get family planning moving, was to do it outside the government. I was never disillusioned with government.

You and I are the force for transformation in the world. We are the consciousness that will define the nature of the reality we are moving into.

Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind.

There are no inevitabilities in history

We cannot be too energetic in reminding our nihilists and positivists that this is a world of action and history.

It is personalities not principles that move the age.

The rise and fall of civilizations in the long, broad course of history can be seen to have been largely a function of the integrity and cogency of their supporting canons of myth; for not authority but aspiration is the motivator, builder, and transformer of civilization.

There's a power that movies and music has, that can move you and motivate you to look at your neighbor in a slightly more respectful way, and look at cultures in a more inclusive way.

The dynamism and freedom that characterizes the West is the product of Christianity's reforming itself and moving forward culturally. The ascendancy of the West is the story of the difference that Christianity makes, and it's a story we can't let our culture forget.