Orwellian Dystopia Quotes & Sayings

Look, my best friend is Xena, Warrior Princess and she is not going to like this forced wedding thing, if you get my drift. — Gabrielle

We are daily bombarded with new information as to the nature of reality. If we are to incorporate this information, we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful, sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind. — M. Scott Peck

There is a time to speak and a time to listen, and sometimes people need to shut up. — David Hope, Baron Hope Of Thornes

For here rolls the sea, and even here lies the other shore waiting to be reached - yes, here is this everlasting present, not distant, not anywhere else. — Rabindranath Tagore

So how do people with autism see the world, exactly? We, only we, can ever know the answer to that one! Sometimes I actually pity you for not being able to see the beauty of the world in the same way we do. Really, our vision of the world can be incredible, just incredible ...
When you see an object, it seems that you see it as an entire thing first, and only afterwards do its details follow on ... But for people with autism, the details jump straight out at us first of all, and then only gradually, detail by detail, does the whole image sort of float up into focus.
Every single thing has its own unique beauty. People with autism get to cherish this beauty, as if it's a kind of blessing given to us. — Naoki Higashida

I tugged at the hem of my brand-new Hecate Hall issue blue plaid skirt (Kilt? Some sort of bizarre skirt/kilt hybrid? A skilt?) — Rachel Hawkins

Did God who gave us flowers and trees, Also provide the allergies? — Yip Harburg

The trouble with magic is that there's too much it just can't fix. When things go wrong, glimpsing junkyard faerie and crows that can turn into girls and back again doesn't help much. The useful magic's never at hand. The three wishes and the genies in bottles, seven-league boots, invisible cloaks and all. They stay in the stories, while out here in the wide world we have to muddle through as best we can on our own. — Charles De Lint

Lips unused to thee, Bashful, sip thy jasmines, As the fainting bee, Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums, Counts his nectars - enters, And is lost in balms! — Emily Dickinson

CCTV is seen either as a symbol of Orwellian dystopia or a technology that will lead to crime-free streets and civil behaviour. While arguments continue, there is very little solid data in the public domain about the costs, quantity and effectiveness of surveillance. — Heather Brooke

Emergence is popular because it is the junk food of curiosity. You — Eliezer Yudkowsky

In the Orwellian dystopia the original sin was thoughtcrime, but in our new corporate dystopia the secret inner crime is need, particularly financial need. People in America hide financial need like they hide sexual perversions.

Why? Because there's a direct correlation between need and rights. The more you need, the more you owe, the fewer rights you have.

Conversely, the less you need, the more you have, the more of a free citizen you get to be. On the extreme ends of this spectrum it is literally a crime to be poor, while a person with enough money literally cannot be prosecuted for certain kinds of crimes. — Matt Taibbi

My basic political principle: If something, whether right- or left-wing, is driven by love and solidarity, it is right; if it is driven by hate and fear it is wrong. Simple as that. — Neel Burton

And I think right now I'm just enjoying finding something such as One Weekend a Month where I can really resonate with this woman's history and her situation. — Renee O'Connor

Such is the control, and such the public mentality, enjoyed by the Swedish planners. The rulers of the Soviet Union, although favoured by despotic power, are not so fortunate. Obstructively resentful of officialdom, the Russian, in the words of the Spanish saying, has always known how orders are 'to be obeyed but not carried out'. To the Swede, that sort of compromise is downright immoral. His elected leaders have received those political blessings denied the autocrats in the Kremlin: compliant citizens and an unopposed bureaucracy. — Roland Huntford

Then she says something about the universe sending us pieces of our past selves to embrace so we can heal them and I must be drunker than I thought because I don't follow her at all. — Roan Parrish

I always wanted to be a writer, but Alan Moore's work and help inspired me to write comics. In some ways the biggest influence on me writing was Punk. There was the idea that you could do something by simply doing it. — Neil Gaiman

His style as a writer places him in the category of the immortals, and his courage as a critic outlives the bitter battles in which he engaged. As a result, we use the word 'Orwellian' in two senses: The first describes a nightmare state, a dystopia of untrammelled power; the second describes the human qualities that are always ranged in resistance to such regimes, and that may be more potent and durable than we sometimes dare to think. — Christopher Hitchens

It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced - when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination. — John Irving