Did Orwell say, “The further a society moves away from the truth, the more it hates those who tell it”?

There is a popular statement on the Internet about the truth, which is often attributed to the author of famous dystopias. We have verified the correctness of this attribution.

As a statement by the writer George Orwell, this phrase can be found on numerous sites collecting quotes from famous people: Socratify.net, "Quotes.info", Tsitaty.ru, "Quotes and aphorisms", "Pearls of Thought" etc. They shared it with their subscribers and some enough large publics on VKontakte, and in 2019 her posted the former mayor of Yekaterinburg, politician Evgeny Roizman, wrote on his Twitter. The statement can also be found in Facebook, Instagram, LiveJournal and other social networks.

We could not find this quote in Orwell's stories, novels and essays. She is not mentioned in Orwell's archive, which has been digitized by University College London, although this archive also includes the writer's correspondence, manuscripts and personal papers. Benedict Cooper, spokesman for the Orwell Society, stated, that this quote is “mistakenly associated” with the popular author.

During its analysis, the authoritative fact-checking project Snopes discoveredthat this phrase first appeared only in 2009. I used the statement in my note Conservative writer Selwyn Duke. This text contains several references to Orwell, including the author quoting the phrase that “telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” By the way, she goes to Orwell too doesn't have no relation.

When the phrase went viral on the Internet precisely as an Orwell quote, Duke even published text entitled “George Orwell is stealing my work,” in which he drew public attention to the true authorship of the expression. In 2021 Duke confirmed this position in comments to fact checkers from Reuters.

Cover photo: © Vernon Richards / Pushkin House

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. Snopes. Did George Orwell Say This About Societies That ‘Drift From the Truth’?
2. Reuters. Fact Check-Quote misattributed to George Orwell about society drifting from the truth continues to circulate online
3. University College London. Orwell Archive
4. Did George Orwell say, “In times of universal lies, telling the truth is extremism”?
5. Arzamas. 12 quotes from George Orwell's diaries