A Clockwork Orange is a 1962 dystopian satirical black comedy novel by English writer Anthony Burgess.
The book satirizes extreme political regimes based on competing views of human perfectibility.
I have curated a best collection of quotes from A Clockwork Orange novel.
Table of Contents
A Clockwork Orange Quotes by Anthony Burgess
“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I kept pushing the old noga through the floorboards near, and the Durango 95 ate up the road like spaghetti.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“This must be a real horrorshow film if you’re so keen on my viddying it.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Bedways is rightways now, so best we go homeways.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you watch them on a screen.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I was always on my oddy knocky.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
Other Book Quotes: The Giver Quotes by Lois Lowry and The Velveteen Rabbit Quotes by Margery Williams Bianco
Quotes from A Clockwork Orange
“To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“And those hard slovos, brothers, were like the beginning of my freedom.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Oh bliss, bliss and heaven… Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh… And then, a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now… I knew such lovely pictures – Alex” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Never,’ I said. ‘One can die but once. Dim died before he was born. That red red krovvy will soon stop.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“If I had died it would have been even better for you political bratchnies, would it not, pretending and treacherous droogs as you are.’ But all that came out was er er er.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain perhaps and, then, sleep forever, and ever and ever.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Eat this sweetish segment or spit it out. You are free.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“What I do I do because I like to do.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Me, me, me. How about me? Where do I come into all this? Am I like just some animal or dog? Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
Famous A Clockwork Orange Quotes
“To turn a decent young man into a piece of clockwork should not, surely, be seen as any triumph for any government, save one that boasts of its repressiveness.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Horrorshow is right, friend. A real show of horrors.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The next morning I woke up at oh eight oh oh hours, my brothers, and as I still felt shagged and fagged and fashed and bashed and my glazzies were stuck together real horrorshow with sleepglue, I thought I would not go to school.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I was cured all right.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well. To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The heresy of an age of reason,’ or some such slovos [words]. ‘I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“We were all feeling that bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it having been an evening of some small energy expenditure.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
Best Quotes from A Clockwork Orange
“Senseless violence is a prerogative of youth, which has much energy but little talent for the constructive.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“But what I do I do because I like to do.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“When we’re healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy – is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“You were not put on this Earth just to get in touch with God.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence – the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I see what is right and approve, but I do what is wrong.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I am everyone’s friend,’I said.’Except to my enemies.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“And to all others in this story profound shooms of lip music brrrrrr. And they can kiss my sharries.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
Profound Quotes from A Clockwork Orange
“The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn’t care.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“It was like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“I viddied that thinking is for the gloopy ones and that the oomny ones use like inspiration and what Bog sends. For now it was lovely music that came to my aid.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Where do I come into all of this? Am I just some animal or dog?’ And that started them off govoreeting real loud and throwing slovos at me. So I creeched louder still, creeching: ‘Am I just to be like a clockwork orange?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Delimitation is always difficult. The world is one, life is one. The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence – the act of love, for instance; music, for instance.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“But this one was a writer, not a reader.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“It’ll be your own torture,” he said, serious. “I hope to God it’ll torture you to madness.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“That’s the law, son. But you were never much of a one for following the law.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses to be bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“The essential intention is the real sin. A man who cannot choose ceases to be a man.” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“What’s it going to be then, eh?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
“Is the man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” ~ Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange).
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