A Quote by Arthur Levitt Jr

George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus. — © Arthur Levitt Jr
George Orwell once blamed the demise of the English language on politics. It's quite possible he never read a prospectus.
Read with care, George Orwell's diaries, from the years 1931 to 1949, can greatly enrich our understanding of how Orwell transmuted the raw material of everyday experience into some of his best-known novels and polemics.
Much has been written about Trump's style of speech, which linguists have said is often unintelligible yet deeply compelling. Orwell's famous 1946 essay, 'Politics and the English Language,' centers on the use of abstract words, often by politicians, to obscure reality.
I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.
A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing.
The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?
George Orwell's '1984' frequently tops surveys of our greatest books: it's not a celebration of poetic language. It's decidedly anti-literary, a masterpiece of personal and political narrative sequence. And its subject matter is crucial, because what '1984' shows is that language can be a dirty trick.
After spending so much time in America, I started travelling with 'In Defence of English Cooking' by George Orwell. It's archaic and old-fashioned in its Englishness and reminds me of home.
Presidents Reagan and the first George Bush never used the vile language of some Trump supporters, but both blamed scarce resources and decaying communities on 'welfare queens' and black criminals like Willie Horton.
I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language.
George Orwell once wrote that a false belief sooner or later collides with physical reality, usually on a battlefield.
English was my fourth language. I arrived, I enrolled in public school, as a child, I believe I was about six years old when we finally landed in Michigan. And I was initially put in special education because I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the English language because I was listening to Hungarian and Albanian and German. My mind broke down like I couldn't quite wrap my mind around the fourth language.
Sales of George Orwell's 1984 have skyrocketed. It's true. So the fallout from the (NSA spying) scandal is worse than we thought. It's forcing Americans to read.
I have a funny relationship to language. When I came to California when I was three I spoke Urdu fluently and I didn't speak a word of English. Within a few months I lost all my Urdu and spoke only English and then I learned Urdu all over again when I was nine. Urdu is my first language but it's not as good as my English and it's sort of become my third language. English is my best language but was the second language I learned.
George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.
James Joyce's English was based on the rhythm of the Irish language. He wrote things that shocked English language speakers but he was thinking in Gaelic. I've sung songs that if they were in English, would have been banned too. The psyche of the Irish language is completely different to the English-speaking world.
Gore speaks to America as if English is its second language; George W. speaks as if English is his second language.
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