Best Quotes from Animal Farm by George Orwell with Page Numbers

‘Comrades, you have heard already about the strange dream that I had last night. But I will come to the dream later. I have something else to say first.'

I do not think, comrades, that I shall be with you for many months longer, and before I die I feel it my duty to pass on to you such wisdom as I have acquired.

Our lives are miserable, laborious and short.

No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old.

The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

Man is the only real enemy we have.

Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished for ever.

All men are enemies. All animals are comrades.

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.

All animals are equal.

Can you not understand that liberty is worth more than ribbons?

Their first act was to gallop in a body right round the boundaries of the farm, as though to make quite sure that no human being was hiding anywhere upon it.

In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, they hurled themselves into the air in great leaps of excitement.

Yes, it was theirs – everything that they could see was theirs!

It was as though they had never seen these things before, and even now they could hardly believe that it was all their own.

A unanimous resolution was passed on the spot that the farmhouse should be preserved as a museum.

The animals had their breakfast, and then Snowball and Napoleon called them together again.

These seven commandments would now be inscribed on the wall; they would form an unalterable law by which all the animals on Animal Farm must live for ever after.

All animals are equal.

Let us make it a point of honour to get in the harvest more quickly than Jones and his men could do.

Boxer’s answer to every problem, every setback, was ‘I will work harder!’

Every mouthful of food was an acute positive pleasure, now that it was truly their own food, produced by themselves and for themselves.

The hens and ducks saved five bushels of corn at the harvest by gathering up the stray grains.

Nobody stole, nobody grumbled over his rations, the quarrelling and biting and jealousy which had been normal features of life in the old days had almost disappeared.

The flag was green, Snowball explained, to represent the green fields of England.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

Snowball proved to them that this was not so.

It should therefore be regarded as a leg.

It is for your sake that we drink that milk and eat those apples.

Surely, comrades, cried Squealer almost pleadingly, skipping from side to side and whisking his tail, surely there is no one among you who wants to see Jones come back?

The tune and even the words of ‘Beasts of England’ were known everywhere.

It was given out that the animals there practised cannibalism, tortured one another with red-hot horseshoes and had their females in common.

However, these stories were never fully believed.

The blackbirds whistled it in the hedges, the pigeons cooed it in the elms, it got into the din of the smithies and the tune of the church bells.

And yet the song was irrepressible.

Snowball launched his first attack.

The men gave a shout of triumph.

The most terrifying spectacle of all was Boxer, rearing up on his hind legs and striking out with his great iron-shod hoofs like a stallion.

I have no wish to take life, not even human life.

At the graveside Snowball made a little speech, emphasizing the need for all animals to be ready to die for Animal Farm if need be.

Mollie! Look me in the face. Do you give me your word of honour that that man was not stroking your nose?

Napoleon announced that from now on the Sunday-morning Meetings would come to an end.

Surely, comrades, you do not want Jones back?

Bravery is not enough. Loyalty and obedience are more important.

If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right.

Discipline, comrades, iron discipline! That is the watchword for today.

By the time he had finished speaking there was no doubt as to which way the vote would go.

Snowball's eloquence had carried them away.

He had seemed to oppose the windmill, simply as a manoeuvre to get rid of Snowball.

Tactics, comrades, tactics!

All that year the animals worked like slaves.

They grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them.

The harvest was a little less successful than in the previous year.

Nothing could have been achieved without Boxer, whose strength seemed equal to that of all the rest of the animals put together.

His two slogans, ‘I will work harder’ and ‘Napoleon is always right’, seemed to him a sufficient answer to all problems.

If they had no more food than they had had in Jones’s day, at least they did not have less.

The needs of the windmill must override everything else.

Napoleon ended his speech with his usual cry of ‘Long live Animal Farm!’

The animals toiled harder than ever, thinking it well worth while to plod to and fro all day with blocks of stone if by doing so they could raise the walls another foot.

Remember, comrades, there must be no alteration in our plans: they shall be carried out to the day.

‘I will work harder!’

‘Four legs good, two legs bad.’

‘I do not understand it. I would not have believed that such things could happen on our farm. It must be due to some fault in ourselves.'

‘The solution, as I see it, is to work harder. From now onwards I shall get up a full hour earlier in the mornings.’

‘That is the true spirit, comrade!’ cried Squealer.

Clover looked down the hillside her eyes filled with tears.

These scenes of terror and slaughter were not what they had looked forward to on that night when old Major first stirred them to rebellion.

It was not for this that they had built the windmill and faced the pellets of Jones’s gun.

‘Beasts of England’ had been abolished.

In 'Beasts of England' we expressed our longing for a better society in days to come.

‘No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.’

‘All the same, there were days when they felt that they would sooner have had less figures and more food.’

‘Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!’

‘Had I a sucking-pig, Ere he had grown as big... He should have learned to be Faithful and true to thee.’

‘What matter? We will build another windmill. We will build six windmills if we feel like it.’

‘We have built the walls far too thick for that. They could not knock it down in a week.’

‘The enemy was in occupation of this very ground that we stand upon. And now – thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon – we have won every inch of it back again!’

‘But they have destroyed the windmill. And we had worked on it for two years!’

‘But this time the stones had vanished too. The force of the explosion had flung them to distances of hundreds of yards.’

‘Do you not see what they are doing? In another moment they are going to pack blasting powder into that hole.’

‘A horse’s lungs do not last for ever,’ she said to him.

To tell you the truth I had been looking forward to my retirement.

‘Boxer!’ she cried, ‘how are you?’

‘It is my lung,’ said Boxer in a weak voice. ‘It does not matter.

‘Boxer!’ cried Clover in a terrible voice. ‘Boxer! Get out! Get out quickly! They are taking you to your death!’

‘Fools! Fools!’ shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth with his small hoofs. ‘Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van?’

But alas! his strength had left him.

‘Forward, comrades!’ he whispered. ‘Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.’

‘I will work harder’ and ‘Comrade Napoleon is always right’ – maxims, he said, which every animal would do well to adopt as his own.

And the word went round that from somewhere or other the pigs had acquired the money to buy themselves another case of whisky.

And yet the animals never gave up hope.

They were still the only farm in the whole country – in all England! – owned and operated by animals.

No creature among them went upon two legs. No creature called any other creature ‘Master’.

If they went hungry, it was not from feeding tyrannical human beings.

But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by their own labour.

Some day it was coming: it might not be soon, it might not be within the lifetime of any animal now living, but still it was coming.

All animals are equal.

The Republic of the Animals which Major had foretold, when the green fields of England should be untrodden by human feet, was still believed in.

And finally there was a tremendous baying of dogs and a shrill crowing from the black cockerel.

After that it did not seem strange when next day the pigs who were supervising the work of the farm all carried whips in their trotters.