George Orwell Quotes

War not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches also what he must not be.

War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.

War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things.

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: 'War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.'

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

Nothing can justify war.

War is death. If we are to engage in war, then we should have to stare it straight in the face and call it by its rightful name.

War makes thieves and peace hangs them.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price.

The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally.

One of the reasons it's important for me to write about war is I really think that the concept of war, the specifics of war, the nature of war, the ethical ambiguities of war, are introduced too late to children. I think they can hear them, understand them, know about them, at a much younger age without being scared to death by the stories.

War... some people glamorise war and glorify war. It's not nice, from whatever point of view you come from.

You cannot be politically correct in a war.

War is a last and terrible defense of even a righteous cause, and sets at defiance all the ordinary laws and customs of society.

That's what wars are: Poor people killing other poor people.

Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked “like an oven”. I wonder who really gets the satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values.

Young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which ... develops patriotism and courage. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul.

War is a fevered god who takes alike maiden and king and clod.

in the clash of contending armies and amid the groans of the wounded and the dying, the interests of education are sacrificed – the pacific virtues take their flight from the earth

All wars are tragedies, but not all wars are sins.

One single war — we all know — may be productive of more evil, immediate and subsequent, than hundreds of years of the unchecked action of the mutual-aid principle may be productive of good.

Could anything be more magnificent. Compared to war all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance.

The essential effect of war on a citizen's conscience is nothing but a legalization and glorification of things that in times of peace constitute crime.