Animal Farm | Quotes

At the start of his speech, Old Major describes the lives the animals of England, and indeed the world, face. Their existence is bleak and devoid of joy. This is the life that he dreams the animals will escape. While this view appears at the beginning of the novel, it remains an equally true description of the animals' lives at the end.

In the animals' quest to overcome human rule, Old Major issues a caution against becoming friendly with humans or, worse, becoming like them. Like many of his other statements, this is a caution the pigs will not heed; they become more and more like the humans as they gain more power over the farm.

This statement distills Old Major's philosophy to its purest essence. Animals must think of themselves as brothers and sisters and relate to one another in unity and equality if the revolution is to succeed.

Benjamin explains his reluctance to take an active role in the rebellion or anything else because, in his opinion, very little truly changes in the long term.

Snowball distills the essence of Animalism and the Seven Commandments into this single, simplistic statement to enable the animals to take in these complex ideas more easily. Eventually the slogan is chanted so frequently that it loses all meaning.

When Boxer believes he has accidentally killed a farm hand during battle, he is deeply sorry, revealing his gentle and kind nature. Even though he believes humans are the enemy, and even accepts that violence may be necessary to defend the farm, he draws the line at killing. Squealer tells the animals that Napoleon would like to let them make their own decisions but sometimes they make wrong decisions.

After the windmill collapses, Napoleon blames the exiled Snowball for the disaster. This strategy unites the animals against a common enemy and deflects scrutiny from the pigs' own flawed plans and leadership.

After Napoleon carries out public executions of animals deemed traitors to the farm, Boxer attempts to understand what has happened. It is impossible for him to make sense of how far the farm has strayed from the original ideals of the rebellion. Boxer is so devoted to his leaders and the ideals he believes they represent that he is willing to blame himself for these events, even though his work ethic has nothing to do with the executions. This sentiment echoes his own interior motto from Chapter 5: I will work harder.

When Pilkington makes this joke at the dinner party with the pigs, it becomes obvious that the farm is a representation of how the upper classes exploit the lower classes in human society, and it underlines Orwell's feeling that inequality is rampant in every type of political and economic system.

The chilling final line of the novel shows the animals realizing that the pigs have become so much like the humans they were trying to defeat that there is no difference between them anymore. The rebellion has changed nothing. Furthermore, Orwell shows humans as gluttonous pigs, no better than the worst of the animals. It is a bleak view of humanity.