George Orwell (1903-50) is one of the twentieth century's well-nigh quotable writers. Although many of his nigh repeated statements come from his essays or from his last novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, a few of his most famous quotations are found in his 1945 novella, Animal Farm.

Merely the meaning of these quotations is often misunderstood, so permit's take a closer look at some of the key quotations from Orwell's Brute Subcontract and place them in context.

'Human is the just creature that consumes without producing.'

This quotation arrives early on in Beast Farm, when Old Major – who, in Orwell'southward allegory for the Soviet Wedlock, represents Lenin – addresses the animals of Manor Farm and inspires them to ascension upward against their primary, the farmer Mr Jones.

Major tells his fellow animals that homo, different cows, chickens, horses, and and so on, 'does non give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is besides weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits.' And however, in spite of this apparent lack of usefulness, man 'is lord of all the animals.'

It is worth pointing out how cleverly Orwell sows the seeds for what will happen later in the book: annotation that pigs do none of these things either (despite their later usefulness as meat when they are slaughtered), so Orwell has already foreshadowed the mode the pigs of the subcontract will have charge and become, effectively, similar men. Both men and pigs, according to Major's speech communication, are useless compared with other animals, yet they are the two creatures that will exist 'lord' over the farm.

'Allow's face up information technology: our lives are miserable, laborious, and curt.'

This quotation also appears in Old Major's speech near the beginning of Beast Subcontract. The line is probably an allusion to Thomas Hobbes's famous assertion from his 1651 book Leviathan: Hobbes wrote that men's lives are lived in 'continual fright, and danger of violent decease; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and brusk' (Leviathan i.xiii.9).

In Leviathan, Hobbes fabricated the case for, essentially, a strong dictatorship – arguing that a ruler must have absolute power over their subjects in order to maintain the rule of constabulary. Given the way Animal Farm will descend into a totalitarian authorities reminiscent of Stalinist Russia, this allusion foreshadows the subsequently events of the novella.

'Iv legs good, two legs bad.'

Inspired by Major's rousing speech calling for revolution, the pigs draw up 7 commandments for the animals of the farm. These begin: 'Any goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.' The animals of the renamed Manor Farm – now known as Brute Farm, of course – institute their ain political credo, Animalism, which is designed to echo the proper name (and values) of Communism.

However, in one case the pigs begin acting similar their ousted human overlord, walking about on two legs rather than four, this slogan is subtly altered. Napoleon (modelled on Stalin) is caught walking about the place on two legs. And the sheep (whose name is a byword for gullibility and willingness to follow orders, of course) become the chief propagandistic tool at the pigs' disposal, bleating in unison the contradistinct slogan: 'Four legs adept, two legs Meliorate! Four legs adept, two legs BETTER! Four legs good, two legs BETTER!'

We take analysed this quotation in more particular hither.

'Tin can you not sympathize that liberty is worth more only ribbons?'

This line is spoken by Snowball when Mollie asks him if she will be immune to wear ribbons in her mane. Snowball replies by telling her that 'those ribbons that you are so devoted to are the bluecoat of slavery. Tin y'all not understand that liberty is worth more ribbons?' Mollie agrees with this reasoning, at least outwardly, but Orwell's narrator notes that she doesn't sound very convinced.

Freedom to wearable something is plain liberty, whereas being told non to habiliment something is the opposite. Once again, Orwell reveals the hypocrisy and irony of a totalitarian regime which says, 'doing this thing isn't liberty, so stop doing that, I order you.'

'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.'

Afterward one of the pigs stands up on his hind legs, the other pigs follow; and Clover and Benjamin discover that the seven commandments written on the barn wall take been rubbed off, to be replace by one single commandment: 'All animals are equal, just some animals are more than equal than others.'

The cleverness of Orwell'southward writing lies in the political doublethink (to use an Orwellian word) that is involved to make sense of the paradox: how can some animals be more equal than others? What saves information technology from beingness pure nonsense is the fact that the pigs do consider themselves equals among themselves: all animals are equal within their two groups (pigs are equals, and the residual of the animals, the 'proles', are equals inside their group), and ane group (the pigs) enjoy a amend life of quality than the residual.

We have analysed this quotation in more detail hither.

'The creatures outside looked from pig to human being, and from man to pig, and from pig to human being once more; only already it was impossible to say which was which.'

The closing words of Animal Farm form one of the novella'south well-nigh famous quotations. The positioning of the (non-porcine) animals outside in the cold while the pigs lord information technology upward within the warmth of the house (living, to all intents and purposes, similar men) reinforces the two-tier club that has adult, with the Haves (the pigs) and Have-Nots (the animals who practise all of the piece of work). Everything has gone full circle – or, arguably, it has get worse than before, since the pigs take turned against their fellow animals.