Quotes from George Orwell's Animal Farm

Quotes from George Orwell's Animal Farm

1) Old Major warns, "Your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that Man and the animals have a common interest....we must not come to resemble him...No animal must ever live in a house or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco, or touch money, or engage in trade."

2) Orwell narrates, "Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarreling and biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had almost disappeared."

3) Squealer consoles the animals, saying, "Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure. On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?" The classic hypocrisy seen here is too hard to miss.

4) Orwell explains, "Once again the animals were conscious of a vague uneasiness. Never to have any dealings with human beings, never to engage in trade, never to make use of money— had not these been among the earliest resolutions passed at the first triumphant Meeting when Jones was expelled?"

5) As Napoleon was deceiving the neighboring farmers he was also tricking his own animals. The scapegoat was again Snowball. "Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball." In fact many of the claims begin to sound ridiculous to the objective mind. Of course, Squealer's mission is to keep everything subjective in the minds of the animals.

6) So Napoleon, with the help of his dogs, slaughters anyone who is said to be disloyal. "...the tale of confessions and executions went on, until there was a pile of corpses lying before Napoleon's feet and the air was heavy with the smell of blood, which had been unknown there since the expulsion of Jones." To top it off, Napoleon outlaws Beasts of England, which had served as one of the only remaining ties between Animal Farm and old Major.

7) But when Muriel reads the writing on the barn wall to Clover, interestingly, the words are, "No animal shall kill any other animal without cause."

8) But to justify this little episode, arrangements to amend the rules are made. "No animal shall drink alcohol to excess."

9) Orwell states, "Somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer— except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs."

10) The 7 Commandments are abridged for the last time, simply reading, "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others."

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