George Orwell: 10 memorable quotes

Writer Eric Blair (George Orwell) was born on June 25, 1903 in Motihari, Bengal, at the time a British colony of India. At age one he moved back to England with his mother. Orwell studied at the prestigious St. Cyprian’s School in Sussex, which he later wrote about in his essay “Such, Such Were the Joys.” After graduating from Eton College, Orwell signed up for the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, but resigned soon after with a deep hatred for imperialism. Upon returning to England he took up the pen name George Orwell. Orwell began his writing career with book reviews and, later, by shaping British propaganda during World War II, a position he resigned from in 1943. Orwell’s literary works include his widely popular novels " Animal Farm" and "1984," as well as many essays and journalistic pieces. Orwell’s novel "1984"  is the source of many phrases now part of popular vocabulary, including “Big Brother,” “doublethink,” and “newspeak.” Today, Orwell is viewed as one of the 20th century's best chronicler’s of English culture. 

1. Language

"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

-1984

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Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

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