Having recently joined Happy City for the summer, it’s my job to help the team on our social media. This includes updating our calendar with important international days, as well as the births, death and anniversaries of influential thinkers. Being an English student, I naturally jumped at the chance to include some of my literary heroes.

And today is a cracker! It’s George Orwell’s birthday and I can’t be the only one thinking that after the intensity and mayhem of #GE2017 this feels particularly significant. Whatever your political views, I hope we can agree that George Orwell’s talent sprung from both his astuteness and his desire to challenge the status quo. A desire that we here at Happy City share!

Orwell’s writing is undoubtedly also concerned with the wellbeing of society, which makes him not only a favourite of mine but of all of us here. So in celebration of his birthday, rather than a single tweet, we’ve decided to pick a selection of our favourite Orwell quotes. Enjoy:

‘It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it.’

‘Myths which are believed tend to become true.’

‘The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?’

‘In a time of universal deceit — telling the truth is a revolutionary act.’

‘If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’

‘Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem invincible.’

Mo Forman – Communications intern