George Orwell Quotes

In contrast, fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

A functioning police state needs no police.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

The fact that Facebook presents facial recognition programmes as a desirable development, well, that in itself is a decisive step toward fascism, as far as I'm concerned.

The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.

My mom told me many times how I need to be careful living inside the regime. We didn't say 'the regime.' We didn't even say 'North Korea.'

If you've lived in a dictatorship for thirty years, you're used to people lying to you.

they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

Everywhere we look we see the encroaching shadow of the police state.

Many Communist government officials have a rigid, dictatorial power, but they live in constant suspicion and fear of anything that might undermine the power they have.

I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.

I mean, they censor your work when they're scared of it.

Big Brother doesn't like all these Little Brothers looking at it.

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens and real diseases are useful material.

Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

Only the freedom of mind can prevent the state from becoming totalitarian and from issuing totalitarian demands.

The totalitarian, to me, is the enemy - the one that's absolute, the one that wants control over the inside of your head, not just your actions and your taxes.

Persecution is the first law of society because it is always easier to suppress criticism than to meet it.

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying.

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.

Next thing you know they'll take your thoughts away.

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.

I grew up in a dictatorship in East Africa.

To be a member of the Communist Party is to have a taste of the police state. It is a diluted taste but is bitter and unforgettable.

In 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only colour to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea. Images of Kim Il-sung are depicted in vivid colours. Rays of yellow and orange emanate from his face: he is the sun.