Why I Write

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

• genjipress · Apr 4, 2018 · Recommends

  Silence, John Cage Man Against Myth, Barrows Dunham The Elements Of Style, Strunk & White (4th ed.) Telling Writing, Macrorie The Zen Teaching Of Huang Po The Pocket Pema Chödrön Why I Write, George Orwell Others come and go from time to time, but those stay.

  on “Ask HN: What books do you keep on your desk?” ↗
• lkm0 · Jun 8, 2026 · Recommends

  If you can read French, I recommend Saint-Simon as the quintessential counter-example. In English, I found "Why I Write" by Orwell very entertaining.

  on “The Cypherpunk Library” ↗
• iak8god · Feb 17, 2017 · Mentions

  Would it have killed the author of this post to name the essays he's quoting? "... good prose is like a windowpane." - Why I write, 1946 "Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an…

  on “I say, damn it, where are the beds? New books on Orwell” ↗
• gsf_emergency_2 · Sep 30, 2025 · Mentions

  …such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention --EAB, Why I Write (The trick could be for some of us amateurs to preferentially attend to the preternaturally funny babies)

  on “Don't Become a Scientist (1999)” ↗
• nomilk · Aug 25, 2026 · Mentions

  …https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades... Orwell's Politics and the English Language on the importance of precise use of language: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel... Orwell's Why I Write on critical thinking and clear communication: https://www.telelib.com/authors/O/OrwellGeorge/essay/whyiwri... Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement Address (a speech rather than an essay, but worthy of quarterly…

  on “How I Read Books” ↗
• neilk · Oct 31, 2013 · Mentions

  > I would very much like to know what it was that gave Orwell that degree of insight. Orwell said it himself, in Why I Write: he believed he has a "power of facing unpleasant facts". By all accounts that sometimes made him difficult company. This focus on negativity probably contributed to his bouts of melancholy. But this…

  on “George Orwell: Politics and the English Language (1946)” ↗
• claudiawerner · Sep 20, 2019 · Mentions

  …else. [0] "Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it." (George Orwell, 1946, "Why I Write")

  on “French high court rules that Steam can’t ban users from reselling digital games” ↗
• krevels · Feb 26, 2010 · Mentions

  George Orwell - Why I Write http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/wiw/english/e_wiw

  on “Ask HN: Any good stories you have about writing?” ↗
• AimHere · Apr 2, 2016 · Mentions

  …Homage to Catalonia does make that clear. There's no sense, in any of Orwell's later writing, that he renounced socialism and plenty that affirmed his socialist ideas. Orwell stated in one of those works (Why I Write, 1946), that every word he wrote since 1936 was for democratic socialism, and the ending of Animal Farm, for instance, ultimately shows the communist pigs being no different from the capitalist humans…

  on “George Orwell in Spain” ↗
• PavlovsCat · Oct 9, 2016 · Mentions

  > The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude. -- George Orwell, "Why I Write" (1946) Having no position means adopting the position of bullies and tyrants; or as the title of the Howard Zinn bio goes, you can't be neutral on a moving train. Also, entertaining "purely technical"…

  on “Turkish government banned dropbox for hiding this torrent. please fork” ↗
• posting2fast · Jul 27, 2018 · Mentions

  …to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects. Everyone writes of them in one guise or another. It is simply a question of which side one takes and what approach one follows. -- George Orwell, "Why I Write" Why would you on the other hand not pay attention? Because you or nobody you love has been put in a camp, for example? Because you're with those who ignore the millions of people who did resist totalitarianism…

  on “It’s hard to have an unusual name in China” ↗
• NeedMoreTea · Dec 8, 2019 · Mentions

  …no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office." With lots of other references to communism, Stalinism and Stalin in the Wikipedia section. One more quote worth relaying: In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". Nineteen Eighty-Four…