12 essential George Orwell quotes about freedom

1. ‘He is a slave with a semblance of liberty which is worse than the most cruel slavery.’ 

2. ‘You just got to say to yourself, "I’m a free man in here" – he tapped his forehead – "and you’re all right".'

3. ‘No one can get up much enthusiasm for a Government which puts you in jail if you open your mouth’

4. ‘Like a drug, the machine is useful, dangerous and habit-forming. The oftener one surrenders to it the tighter its grip becomes.’

5. ‘There was a belief in the revolution and the future, a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and freedom.’

6. ‘In every one of those little stucco boxes there’s some poor bastard who’s never free except when he’s fast asleep and dreaming’

7. ‘The nation is bound together by an invisible chain.’

8. ‘The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.’

9. ‘If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.’

10. ‘Freedom of speech is real.’

11. ‘Will the man in the street ever feel that freedom of the mind is as important and as much in need of being defended as his daily bread?’

12. ‘What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.’