George Orwell Quotes

The only thing the East German system taught us was that we should never do it that way again.

Communism in Cuba will collapse sooner or later because you can't control the free flow of information. Communism prevents organizations from developing by stopping the flow of information. The system is based on police and listening devices and triggers the worst characteristics in humans.

The reader feels as if he is in Chongjin, where starving people ate the bark off trees; or atop Mount Taesong with the elite of Pyongyang, whose existence is a mix of sadism and whimsy; or with the masses who are bombarded day and night with the propaganda of North Korea's alternate reality.

Authoritarian systems evolve. Authoritarianism in the Internet Age is not your old Cold War authoritarianism.

Dystopian novels, such as Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four,' often tend to site their despotised or deformed civilisations in urban environments.

'The Handmaid's Tale' is a horrifying and horrifyingly possible vision of the future.

North Koreans are tragically oppressed. Despite the risks to my personal safety, I feel a strong obligation to tell the world about the Orwellian nightmare that North Koreans face.

When I was growing up, we were taught in school that North Koreans, and especially the North Korean leadership, were all devils.

The cadence of life is slower in North Korea.

More harm was done in the 20th century by faceless bureaucrats than tyrant dictators.

The post-totalitarian malady has taken its most acute form in Romania. And it has taken place for very specific reasons. The repression here has been more cruel, more brutal, than in other states caught in the inferno of a 'socialist paradise.'

It is well known that the Soviet Union closely regulates all organizations and movements, including religion.

I don't want to live in a militarised country behind an iron curtain. It's boring. Been there and seen the movie. I've done that.

I'd never been in a police state. I didn't know what it was. I knew that it was, in the general way that people know that two and two is four, but it had no emotional value for me until I found myself in the middle of it.

But, in North Korea, it's just the opposite. There's one story. It's written by the Kim regime. And 23 million people are conscripted to be secondary characters. There, as a youth, your aptitude towards certain jobs is measured, and the rest of your life is dictated, whether you'll be a fisherman or a farmer or an opera singer.

Literature has its own life, even in a dictatorship like the Soviet Union.

I've always been fascinated by totalitarian regimes. I'm not an admirer of them.

Communism feeds on aggression, hatred, and the imprisonment of men's minds and souls. This shall not take root in the United States.

Dictators are interesting, no?

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

As a result of half a century of Soviet rule people have been weaned from a belief in human kindness.

Russia is an Evil Empire.

Nondemocratic regimes imperil the security of the world. They stay in power by controlling their populations. This control invariably requires an increasing amount of repression. To justify this repression and maintain internal stability, external enemies must be manufactured.

Fascism means war.

When a dictatorship controls the political life of a country, responsible opposition cannot develop, and dissent is driven underground and toward the extreme. And to draw attention away from their social and economic failures, dictators place blame on other countries and other races, and stir the hatred that leads to violence. This status quo of despotism and anger cannot be ignored or appeased, kept in a box or bought off.