GEORGE ORWELL POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE QUOTES

“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

“Don’t use clichés. They are a dime a dozen and do nothing to enhance your writing.”

“Bad writing reveals bad thinking.”

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.”

“Never use a long word when a short one will do.”

“If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.”

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”

“The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

“If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“The English language becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

“The function of language is not to deceive, but to communicate.” THANK YOU LORD FOR ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL DAY QUOTES

“Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.”

“But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases: never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”

“Be sure to get your grammar right.”

“If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy.”

“The word ‘fascism’ now has no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable.'”

“The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness.”

“If you don’t want to sound like a fool, avoid overuse of long words.”

“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms.”

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”