The Sentence That Can Expose a Foolish Thought

“The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.” — George Orwell, English novelist and essayist, “Politics and the English Language” (1946)

Why This Quote Today: Orwell wrote this essay just after the Second World War, when public language had become an especially polished instrument for disguising violence, power, and nonsense. Governments called bombing “pacification”; political writing hid behind foggy abstractions such as “the current situation” and “the implementation of objectives.” Orwell’s point was sharper than “write clearly.” He argued that vague language can make vague thinking feel respectable.

Here is the useful part: when you catch yourself writing a sentence packed with nouns like impact, process, conversation, or optimization, ask who is doing what to whom. “We need to have a conversation about improving the process” becomes “We need to tell the editor which deadline we missed.” The second sentence may be less elegant, but it has the great virtue of being answerable.

That is Orwell’s small act of intellectual hygiene: replace the mist with the furniture. Not every abstraction is bad—“justice” and “love” are indispensable words—but a foggy sentence should make you suspicious, especially when it arrives wearing a tie. Before sending an email, making a promise, or forming an opinion, find one concrete verb. It may reveal that you have a thought. It may also reveal that you have been hiding from one.

Related: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-British philosopher, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921).

“If names are not correct, language will not be in accordance with the truth of things.” — Confucius, Chinese philosopher, Analects.