Orwell On Truth

By George Orwell

Over the course of his career, George Orwell wrote about many things, but no matter what he wrote the goal was to get at the fundamental truths of the world. He had no place for dissemblers, liars, conmen, or frauds, and he made his feelings well-known. In Orwell on Truth, excerpts from across Orwell’s career show how his writing and worldview developed over the decades, profoundly shaped by his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, and further by World War II and the rise of totalitarian states. In a world that seems increasingly like one of Orwell’s dystopias, a willingness to speak truth to power is more important than ever. With Orwell on Truth, readers get a collection of both powerful quotes and the context for them.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Apr 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781328508713

George Orwell

George Orwell (1903–1950), the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair, was an English novelist, essayist, and critic. He was born in India and educated at Eton. After service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living by writing. An author and journalist, Orwell was one of the most prominent and influential figures in twentieth-century literature. His unique political allegory Animal Farm was published in 1945, and it was this novel, together with the dystopia of 1984 (1949), which brought him worldwide fame. 

Book preview

‘The truth about the English and their Empire’

from Burmese Days (1934)

[Flory] celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday in hospital, covered from head to foot with hideous sores which were called mudsores, but were probably caused by whisky and bad food. They left little pits in his skin which did not disappear for two years. Quite suddenly he had begun to look and feel very much older. His youth was finished. Eight years of Eastern life, fever, loneliness and intermittent drinking, had set their mark on him.

Since then, each year had been lonelier and more bitter than the last. What was at the centre of all his thoughts now, and what poisoned everything, was the ever bitterer hatred of the atmosphere of imperialism in which he lived. For as his brain developed—you cannot stop your brain developing, and it is one of the tragedies of the half-educated that they develop late, when they are already committed to some wrong way of life—he had grasped the truth about the English and their Empire. The Indian Empire is a despotism—benevolent, no doubt, but still a despotism with theft as its final object. And as to the English of the East, the sahiblog, Flory had come so to hate them from living in their society, that he was quite incapable of being fair to them. For after all, the poor devils are no worse than anybody else. They lead unenviable lives; it is a poor bargain to spend thirty years, ill-paid, in an alien country, and then come home with a wrecked liver and a pineapple backside from sitting in cane chairs, to settle down as the bore of some second-rate Club. On the other hand, the sahiblog are not to be idealised. There is a prevalent idea that the men at the ‘outposts of Empire’ are at least able and hardworking. It is a delusion. Outside the scientific services—the Forest Department, the Public Works Department and the like—there is no particular need for a British official in India to do his job competently. Few of them work as hard or as intelligently as the postmaster of a provincial town in England. The real work of administration is done mainly by native subordinates; and the real backbone of the despotism is not the officials but the Army. Given the Army, the officials and the business men can rub along safely enough even if they are fools. And most of them are fools. A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million

Reviews for Orwell On Truth

[zanadont · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

EXCELLENT curation of Orwell writings on the subject of truth, justice, honesty, power, corruption and the civic job of politicians and civilians in a **functioning** democracy.

[benkline · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Orwell was an absolute genius at just seeing things clearly. A truth is a truth, no matter what side of the divide you are on. And this is more poignant today than ever. When Republicans see non-truths in things because its Republican and when Democrats do the same. When Christians do the same, when group X or Gender Y or Party B or Country C does Atrocity/Stupid Action/Mistake/Scandal those in said grouping ignore it, but then when the other party/country/gender/grouping/religion/etc. does the same Atrocity/Stupid Action/Mistake/Scandal then its 'an outroar' or 'such a public farce'. Its a truth regardless of your political leanings, its a truth regardless of political parties, of countries, etc. If you want moral high-ground, then its the same for YOUR guy or YOUR president as it is for THEIR guy or THEIR president.

Orwell saw this THEN, and we need to see it NOW. Sadly - we don't.

Hitchens explained Orwell probably the best in that he never wavered on any of his stances. What Orwell said Day 1 was how it should be, and how he viewed it, and how he stood on Day 25 and on Day 285. Its not to say he was irrational and couldn't be changed in his stances, its meaning that when he saw evil (Russian regimes, Nazism, totalitarianism, etc.), he called it what it was - evil, and then never wavered on calling it that. If it was evil when it was the bad guys doing it, its still evil when said bad guys now become your allies ("good guys").

A voice of (and for) intelligentsia and intelligence in a dark age then and now, we need more Orwell and we need more writers like Orwell in today's society and times.