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A Plongeur Is A Slave, And A Wasted Slave, Doing Stupid And Largely Unnecessary Work. He Is Kept At Work, Ultimately, Because Of A Vague Feeling That He Would Be Dangerous If He Had Leisure. And Educated People, Who Should Be On His Side, Acquiesce In The Process, Because They Know Nothing About Him And Consequently Are Afraid Of Him.

-George Orwell

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A Plongeur Is A

George Orwell

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A Plongeur Is A Slave, And A Wasted Slave, Doing Stupid And Largely Unnecessary Work. He Is Kept At Work, Ultimately, Because Of A Vague Feeling That He Would Be Dangerous If He Had Leisure. And Educated People, Who Should Be On His Side, Acquiesce In The Process, Because They Know Nothing About Him And Consequently Are Afraid Of Him.

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Money, Money, All Is Money! Could You Write Even A Penny Novelette Without Money To Put Heart In You?

The Object Of Powder Is Powder.

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic. Women Face Childbed And The Scrubbing Brush, Revolutionaries Keep Their Mouths Shut In The Torture Chamber, Battleships Go Down With Their Guns Still Firing When Their Decks Are Awash.

You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty, And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

We Believe Half-instinctively That Evil Always Defeats Itself In The Long Run. Pacifism Is Founded Largely On This Belief. Don't Resist Evil, And It Will Somehow Destroy Itself. But Why Should It? What Evidence Is There That It Does... Unless Conquered From The Outside By Military Force?

Is The English Press Honest Or Dishonest? At Normal Times It Is Deeply Dishonest. All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News. Yet I Do Not Suppose There Is One Paper In England That Can Be Straightforwardly Bribed With Hard Cash. In The France Of The Third Republic All But A Very Few Of The Newspapers Could Notoriously Be Bought Over The Counter Like So Many Pounds Of Cheese.

Politically, Swift Was One Of Those People Who Are Driven Into A Sort Of Perverse Toryism By The Follies Of The Progressive Party Of The Moment.

A Thing Which I Regret, And Which I Will Try To Remedy Some Time, Is That I Have Never In My Life Planted A Walnut. Nobody Does Plant Them Nowadays-when You See A Walnut It Is Almost Invariably An Old Tree. If You Plant A Walnut You Are Planting It For Your Grandchildren, And Who Cares A Damn For His Grandchildren?

The Fallacy Is To Believe That Under A Dictatorial Government You Can Be Free Inside

Autobiography Is Only To Be Trusted When It Reveals Something Disgraceful.

At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.

The Words Democracy, Socialism, Freedom, Patriotic, Realistic, Justice Have Each Of Them Several Different Meanings Which Cannot Be Reconciled With One Another.

The Citizen Of Oceania Is Not Allowed To Know Anything Of The Tenets Of The Other Two Philosophies, But He Is Taught To Execrate Them As Barbarous Outrages Upon Morality And Common Sense. Actually, The Three Philosophies Are Barely Distinguishable.

A Dirty Joke Is Not, Of Course, A Serious Attack On Morality, But It Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion, A Momentary Wish That Things Were Otherwise.

The Essence Of Oligarchical Rule Is Not Father-to-son Inheritance, But The Persistence Of A Certain World-view And A Certain Way Of Life, Imposed By The Dead Upon The Living. A Ruling Group Is A Ruling Group So Long As It Can Nominate Its Successors. The Party Is Not Concerned With Perpetuating Its Blood But With Perpetuating Itself. Who Wields Power Is Not Important, Provided That The Hierarchical Structure Remains Always The Same.

No One Is Patriotic About Taxes.

As I Write, Highly Civilized Human Beings Are Flying Overhead, Trying To Kill Me. They Do Not Feel Any Enmity Against Me As An Individual, Nor I Against Them. They Are Only 'doing Their Duty'

He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear.

The Clock Struck Half Past Two. In The Little Office At The Back Of Mr. Mckechnie's Bookshop, Gordon--gordon Comstock, Last Member Of The Comstock Family, Aged Twenty-nine And Rather Moth-eaten Already--lounged Across The Table, Pushing A Fourpenny Packet Of Player's Weights Open And Shut With His Thumb.

Now He Had Recognized Himself As A Dead Man It Became Important To Stay Alive As Long As Possible.

High Sentiments Always Win In The End. The Leaders Who Offer Blood, Toil, Tears And Sweat Always Get More Out Of Their Followers Than Those Who Offer Safety And A Good Time. When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic.

A Peace That Was Truly Permanent Would Be The Same As A Permanent War.

Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimetres Inside Your Skull.

[t]he More One Is Conscious Of One's Political Bias, The More Chance One Has Of Acting Politically Without Sacrificing One's Aesthetic And Intellectual Integrity.

Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

As Soon As You Think Of Fishing You Think Of Things That Don't Belong To The Modern World. The Very Idea Of Sitting All Day Under A Willow Tree Beside A Quiet Pool - And Being Able To Find A Quiet Pool To Sit Beside- Belongs To A Time Before The War, Before Radio, Before Aeroplanes, Before Hitler.

No One, At Any Rate No English Writer, Has Written Better About Childhood Than Dickens. In Spite Of All The Knowledge That Has Accumulated Since, In Spite Of The Fact That Children Are Now Comparatively Sanely Treated, No Novelist Has Shown The Same Power Of Entering Into The Child's Point Of View.

He Would Say That God Had Given Him A Tail To Keep The Flies Off, But That He Would Sooner Have Had No Tail And No Flies.

But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother.

All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News.

She's Beautiful,' He Murmured. 'she's A Metre Across The Hips, Easily,' Said Julia. 'that Is Her Style Of Beauty,' Said Winston.

Man Is The Only Real Enemy We Have. Remove Man From The Scene, And The Root Cause Of Hunger And Overwork Is Abolished Forever.

I Watched Him [a 'fat Russian Agent'] With Some Interest, For It Was The First Time That I Had Seen A Person Whose Profession Was Telling Lies -- Unless One Counts Journalists.

Do You Remember Writing In Your Diary," He Said, "that It Did Not Matter Whether I Was A Friend Or An Enemy, Since I Was At Least A Person Who Understood You And Could Be Talked To? You Were Right. I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

Ignorance And Prejudice Are The Ballast Of Our Ship Of State - However, Ships Without Ballast Are Not Seaworthy And Cannot Sail In The Tempests, Nor Reach A Safe Harbor.

Why Should Be Fruit Be Held Inferior To The Flower?

No One I Met At This Time -- Doctors, Nurses, Practicantes, Or Fellow-patients -- Failed To Assure Me That A Man Who Is Hit Through The Neck And Survives It Is The Luckiest Creature Alive. I Could Not Help Thinking That It Would Be Even Luckier Not To Be Hit At All.

The Capitalists Owned Everything In The World, And Everyone Else Was Their Slave. They Owned All The Land, All The Houses, All The Factories, And All The Money. If Anyone Disobeyed Them They Could Throw Him Into Prison, Or They Could Take His Job Away And Starve Him To Death. When Any Ordinary Person Spoke To A Capitalist He Had To Cringe And Bow To Him, And Take Off His Cap And Address Him As 'sir'

I Would Sooner Be A Foreigner In Spain Than In Most Countries. How Easy It Is To Make Friends In Spain!

To Die Hating Them, That Was Freedom.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor.

If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.

As I Write, Highly Civilized Human Beings Are Flying Overhead, Trying To Kill Me.

Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.

So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

Roughly Speaking, The More One Pays For Food, The More Sweat And Spittle One Is Obliged To Eat With It.... Dirtiness Is Inherent In Hotels And Restaurants, Because Sound Food Is Sacrificed To Punctuality And Smartness.

To An Ordinary Human Being, Love Means Nothing If It Does Not Mean Loving Some People More Than Others.

It Is A Feeling Of Relief, Almost Of Pleasure, At Knowing Yourself At Last Genuinely Down And Out. You Have Talked So Often Of Going To The Dogs - And Well, Here Are The Dogs, And You Have Reached Them, And You Can Stand It. It Takes Off A Lot Of Anxiety.

All That Was Required Of Them (i.e. The Brain-washed Masses) Was A Primitive Patriotism Which Could Be Appealed To Whenever It Was Necessary To Make Them Accept Longer Working Hours Or Shorter Rations. And Even When They Became Discontented, As They Sometimes Did, Their Discontent Led Nowhere, Because, Being Without General Ideas, They Could Only Focus It On Petty Specific Grievances. The Larger Evils Invariably Escaped Their Notice.

The Totalitarian States Can Do Great Things, But There Is One Thing They Cannot Do: They Cannot Give The Factory-worker A Rifle And Tell Him To Take It Home And Keep It In His Bedroom. That Rifle, Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Laborer's Cottage, Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

Napoleon Is Always Right.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor. War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces, Or Pouring Into The Stratosphere, Or Sinking In The Depths Of The Sea, Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable, And Hence, In The Long Run, Too Intelligent.

Winston Was Gelatinous With Fatigue.

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me--

News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.

A Hierarchical Society Is Only Possible On The Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance, This New Version Is The Past And No Different Past Can Ever Have Existed. In Principle The War Effort Is Always Planned To Keep Society On The Brink Of Starvation. The War Is Waged By The Ruling Group Against Its Own Subjects And Its Object Is Not The Victory Over Either Eurasia Or East Asia But To Keep The Very Structure Of Society Intact.

I Am Well Acquainted With All The Arguments Against Freedom Of Thought And Speech - The Arguments Which Claim That It Cannot Exist, And The Arguments Which Claim That It Ought Not To. I Answer Simply That They Don't Convince Me And That Our Civilization Over A Period Of Four Hundred Years Has Been Founded On The Opposite Notice.

The Quickest Way Of Ending A War Is To Lose It.

It Could Not Have Been Ten Seconds, And Yet It Seemed A Long Time That Their Hands Were Clasped Together. He Had Time To Learn Every Detail Of Her Hand.

By Preaching The Doctrine That Nothing Is To Be Admired Except Steel And Concrete, One Merely Makes It A Little Surer That Human Beings Will Have No Outlet For Their Surplus Energy Except In Hatred And Leader Worship.

Before The War, And Especially Before The Boer War, It Was Summer All The Year Round.

Envy Is A Horrible Thing. It Is Unlike All Other Kinds Of Suffering In That There Is No Disguising It, No Elevating It Into Tragedy. It Is More Than Merely Painful, It Is Disgusting.

The Secret Of A Successful Restaurant Is Sharp Knives.

The Further A Society Drifts From Truth The More It Will Hate Those Who Speak It.

In So Far As It Takes Effect At All, Pacifist Propaganda Can Only Be Effective Against Those Countries Where A Certain Amount Of Freedom Of Speech Is Still Permitted; In Other Words It Is Helpful To Totalitarianism.

Freedom Of Speech

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality.

The English Are Probably More Capable Than Most Peoples Of Making Revolutionary Change Without Bloodshed. In England, If Anywhere,it Would Be Possible To Abolish Poverty Without Destroying Liberty.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule, Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils.

One Can Love A Child, Perhaps, More Deeply Than One Can Love Another Adult, But It Is Rash To Assume That The Child Feels Any Love In Return.

The High-water Mark, So To Speak, Of Socialist Literature Is W.h. Auden, A Sort Of Gutless Kipling.

People Talk About The Horrors Of War, But What Weapon Has A Man Invented That Even Approaches In Cruelty Some Of The Commoner Diseases? 'natural' Death, Almost By Defintion, Means Something Slow, Smelly And Painful.

The Real Test Of Character Is How You Treat Someone Who Has No Possibility Of Doing You Any Good.

Recently I Was Reading Somewhere Or Other An Italian Curio-dealer Who Attempted To Sell A 17th Century Crucifix To J.p. Morgan. Inside It Was Concealed A Stiletto. What A Perfect Symbol Of The Christian Religion.

When You Make Love You're Using Up Energy; And Afterwards You Feel Happy And Don't Give A Damn For Anything. They Can't Bear You To Feel Like That. They Want You To Be Bursting With Energy All The Time. All This Marching Up And Down And Cheering And Waving Flags Is Simply Sex Gone Sour. If You're Happy Inside Yourself, Why Should You Get Excited About Big Brother And The Three-year Plans And The Two Minutes Hate And All The Rest Of Their Bloody Rot?

To Walk Through The Ruined Cities Of Germany Is To Feel An Actual Doubt About The Continuity Of Civilization.

On The Whole, Human Beings Want To Be Good, But Not Too Good, And Not Quite All The Time.

Good Novels Are Not Written By Orthodoxy-sniffers, Nor By People Who Are Conscience-stricken About Their Own Orthodoxy. Good Novels Are Written By People Who Are Not Frightened.

Oceania Was At War With Eurasia; Therefore Oceania Had Always Been At War With Eurasia.

The Cheaper Books Become, The Less Money Is Spent On Books.

The Machine Has Got To Be Accepted, But It Is Probably Better To Accept It Rather As One Accepts A Drug - That Is, Grudgingly And Suspiciously. Like A Drug, The Machine Is Useful, Dangerous, And Habit-forming. The Oftener One Surrenders To It The Tighter Its Grip Becomes.

I Managed To Get My Copy Of Ulysses Through Safely This Time. I Rather Wish I Had Never Read It. It Gives Me An Inferiority Complex. When I Read A Book Like That And Then Come Back To My Own Work, I Feel Like A Eunuch Who Has Taken A Course In Voice Production.

Objective Considerations Of Contemporary Phenomena Compel The Conclusion That Success Or Failure In Competitive Activities Exhibits No Tendency To Be Commensurate With Innate Capacity, But That A Considerable Element Of The Unpredictable Must Invaria.

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One. At One Time It Had Been A Sign Of Madness To Believe That The Earth Goes Round The Sun; Today, To Believe The Past Is Inalterable. He Might Be Alone In Holding That Belief, And If Alone, Then A Lunatic. But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

The Fact Is That Certain Themes Cannot Be Celebrated In Words, And Tyranny Is One Of Them. No One Ever Wrote A Good Book In Praise Of The Inquisition.

It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.

It's Frightful That People Who Are So Ignorant Should Have So Much Influence.

Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.

In All The Modern Talk About Energy, Efficiency, Social Service And The Rest Of It, What Meaning Is There Except "get Money, Get It Legally, And Get A Lot Of It"? Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue.

In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.

During The First Two Months Of The War It Was The Anarchists More Than Anyone Else Who Had Saved The Situation, And Much Later Than This The Anarchist Militia, In Spite Of Their Indiscipline, Were Notoriously The Best Fighters Among The Purely Spanish Forces.

He Examined The Chess Problem And Set Out The Pieces. It Was A Tricky Ending, Involving A Couple Of Knights. 'white To Play And Mate In Two Moves.' Winston Looked Up At The Portrait Of Big Brother. White Always Mates, He Thought With A Sort Of Cloudy Mysticism. Always, Without Exception, It Is So Arranged. In No Chess Problem Since The Beginning Of The World Has Black Ever Won. Did It Not Symbolize The Eternal, Unvarying Triumph Of Good Over Evil? The Huge Face Gazed Back At Him, Full Of Calm Power. White Always Mates.

Mankind Is Not Likely To Salvage Civilization Unless He Can Evolve A System Of Good And Evil Which Is Independent Of Heaven And Hell.

It Was Curious To Think That The Sky Was The Same For Everybody, In Eurasia Or Eastasia As Well As Here. And The People Under The Sky Were Also Very Much The Same--everywhere, All Over The World, Hundreds Or Thousands Of Millions Of People Just Like This, People Ignorant Of One Another's Existence, Held Apart By Walls Of Hatred And Lies, And Yet Almost Exactly The Same--people Who Had Never Learned To Think But Were Storing Up In Their Hearts And Bellies And Muscles The Power That Would One Day Overturn The World.

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.

I Am Afraid Of Death. You Are Young, So Presumably You're More Afraid Of It Than I Am. Obviously We Shall Put If Off As Long As We Can. But It Makes Very Little Difference. So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

You Were The Dead; Theirs Was The Future.

In This Game That We're Playing, We Can't Win. Some Kinds Of Failure Are Better Than Other Kinds, That's All.

One Has To Belong To The Intelligentsia To Believe Things Like That: No Ordinary Man Could Be Such A Fool.

To Accept An Unorthodoxy Is Always To Inherit Unresolved Contradictions

My Best Fishing-memory Is About Some Fish That I Never Caught.

For Weeks Past He Had Been Making Ready For This Moment, And It Had Never Crossed His Mind That Anything Would Be Needed Except Courage. The Actual Writing Would Be Easy. All He Had To Do Was To Transfer To Paper The Interminable Restless Monologue That Had Been Running Inside His Head, Literally For Years.

For The Future. For The Unborn.

I Felt As If I Was The Only Person Awake In A City Of Sleepwalkers. That's An Illusion, Of Course. When You Walk Through A Crowd Of Strangers It's Next Door To Impossible Not To Imagine That They're All Waxworks, But Probably They're Thinking Just The Same About You.

To Say "i Accept" In An Age Like Our Own Is To Say That You Accept Concentration-camps, Rubber Truncheons, Hitler, Stalin, Bombs, Aeroplanes, Tinned Food, Machine Guns, Putsches, Purges, Slogans, Bedaux Belts, Gas-masks, Submarines, Spies, Provocateurs, Press-censorship, Secret Prisons, Aspirins, Hollywood Films And Political Murder.

Hollywood Films

From Where Winston Stood It Was Just Possible To Read, Picked Out On Its White Face In Elegant Lettering, The Three Slogans Of The Party: War Is Peace Freedom Is Slavery Ignorance Is Strength.

It Was Not The Man's Brain That Was Speaking; It Was His Larynx.

If There Really Is Such A Thing As Turning In One's Grave, Shakespeare Must Get A Lot Of Exercise.

The Urge To Shout Filthy Words At The Top Of His Voice Was As Strong As Ever.

War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.

Surely, Comrades, You Don't Want Jones Back?

We Shall Abolish The Orgasm. Our Neurologists Are At Work Upon It Now.

He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

Winston Churchill Could Not Definitely Remember A Time When His Country Had Not Been At War.

Several Of Them Would Have Protested If They Could Have Found The Right Arguments.

When The White Man Turns Tyrant, It Is His Own Freedom That He Destroys

A Tragic Situation Exists Precisely When Virtue Does Not Triumph But When It Is Still Felt That Man Is Nobler Than The Forces Which Destroy Him.

I Did Try Very Hard To Tell The Whole Truth Without Violating My Literary Instincts.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother Exist? O'brien: Of Course He Exists. Winston Smith: Does He Exist Like You Or Me? O'brien: You Do Not Exist.

To Know And Not To Know, To Be Conscious Of Complete Truthfulness While Telling Carefully Constructed Lies, To Hold Simultaneously Two Opinions Which Cancelled Out, Knowing Them To Be Contradictory And Believing In Both Of Them, To Use Logic Against Logic, To Repudiate Morality While Laying Claim To It, To Believe That Democracy Was Impossible And That The Party Was The Guardian Of Democracy.

I Have Tipped Waiters, And I Have Been Tipped By Waiters.

The Energy That Actually Shapes The World Springs From Emotions - Racial Pride, Leader-worship, Religious Belief, Love Of War - Which Liberal Intellectuals Mechanically Write Off As Anachronisms, And Which They Have Usually Destroyed So Completely In Themselves As To Have Lost All Power Of Action.

England Is The Most Class-ridden Country Under The Sun. It Is A Land Of Snobbery And Privilege, Ruled Largely By The Old And Silly.

It Reminded Us That Propaganda In Some Form Or Other Lurks In Every Book, That Every Work Of Art Has A Meaning And A Purpose - A Political, Social And Religious Purpose - That Our Aesthetic Judgements Are Always Coloured By Our Prejudices And Beliefs

He Drove His Mind Into The Abyss Where Poetry Is Written.

All Nationalistic Distinctions - All Claims To Be Better Than Somebody Else Because You Have A Different-shaped Skull Or Speak A Different Dialect - Are Entirely Spurious, But They Are Important So Long As People Believe In Them.

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

Except For The Small Revolutionary Groups Which Exist In All Countries, The Whole World Was Determined Upon Preventing Revolution In Spain. In Particular The Communist Party, With Soviet Russia Behind It, Had Thrown Its Whole Weight Against The Revolution. It Was The Communist Thesis That Revolution At This Stage Would Be Fatal And That What Was To Be Aimed At In Spain Was Not Workers' Control, But Bourgeois Democracy. It Hardly Needs Pointing Out Why 'liberal' Capitalist Opinion Took The Same Line.

The Men Who Were Well Enough To Stand Had Moved Across The Carriage To Cheer The Italians As They Went Past. A Crutch Waved Out Of The Window; Bandaged Forearms Made The Red Salute. It Was Like An Allegorical Picture Of War; The Trainload Of Fresh Men Gliding Proudly Up The Line, The Maimed Men Sliding Slowly Down, And All The While The Guns On The Open Trucks Making One's Heart Leap As Guns Always Do, And Reviving That Pernicious Feeling, So Difficult To Get Rid Of, That War *is* Glorious After All.

A Fat Man Is Never So Happy As When He Is Describing Himself As "robust.

For, After All, How Do We Know That Two And Two Make Four? Or That The Force Of Gravity Works? Or That The Past Is Unchangeable? If Both The Past And The External World Exist Only In The Mind, And If The Mind Itself Is Controllable – What Then?

Now I Will Tell You The Answer To My Question. It Is This. The Party Seeks Power Entirely For Its Own Sake. We Are Not Interested In The Good Of Others; We Are Interested Solely In Power, Pure Power.

We Of The Sinking Middle Class May Sink Without Further Struggles Into The Working Class Where We Belong, And Probably When We Get There It Will Not Be So Dreadful As We Feared, For, After All, We Have Nothing To Lose.

Thoughtcrime Was Not A Thing That Could Be Concealed Forever. You Might Dodge Successfully For A While, Even For Years, But Sooner Or Later They Were Bound To Get You.

The Point Is That We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right. Intellectually, It Is Possible To Carry On This Process For An Indefinite Time: The Only Check On It Is That Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

And If All Others Accepted The Lie Which The Party Imposed—if All Records Told The Same Tale—then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth. 'who Controls The Past' Ran The Party Slogan, 'controls The Future: Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

The Word Fascism Has Now No Meaning Except In So Far As It Signifies 'something Not Desirable.'

Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.

So Long As They (the Proles) Continued To Work And Breed, Their Other Activities Were Without Importance. Left To Themselves, Like Cattle Turned Loose Upon The Plains Of Argentina, They Had Reverted To A Style Of Life That Appeared To Be Natural To Them, A Sort Of Ancestral Pattern...heavy Physical Work, The Care Of Home And Children, Petty Quarrels With Neighbors, Films, Football, Beer And Above All, Gambling Filled Up The Horizon Of Their Minds. To Keep Them In Control Was Not Difficult.

Gordon Eyed Them With Inert Hatred. At This Moment He Hated All Books, And Novels Most Of All. Horrible To Think Of All That Soggy, Half-baked Trash Massed Together In One Place.

At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Ideas Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question.

The Choice For Mankind Lies Between Freedom And Happiness And For The Great Bulk Of Mankind, Happiness Is Better.

Freedom And Happiness

It Was Only A Hopeless Fantasy, It Passed Like An April Day, But A Look And A Word And The Dreams They Stirred They Have Stolen My Heart Away.

As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.

The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.

It Is Curious How People Take It For Granted That They Have A Right To Preach At You And Pray Over You As Soon As Your Income Falls Below A Certain Level.

The Whole Question Of Evolution Seems Less Momentous Than It Did, Because, Unlike The Victorians, We Do Not Feel That To Be Descended From Animals Is Degrading To Human Dignity.

It Had Become Usual To Give Napoleon The Credit For Every Successful Achievement And Every Stroke Of Good Fortune. You Would Often Hear One Hen Remark To Another, "under The Guidance Of Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I Have Laid Five Eggs In Six Days" Or Two Cows, Enjoying A Drink At The Pool, Would Exclaim, "thanks To The Leadership Of Comrade Napoleon, How Excellent This Water Tastes!".

Using The Word ‘political’ In The Widest Possible Sense. Desire To Push The World In A Certain Direction, To Alter Other Peoples’ Idea Of The Kind Of Society That They Should Strive After. Once Again, No Book Is Genuinely Free From Political Bias. The Opinion That Art Should Have Nothing To Do With Politics Is Itself A Political Attitude.

If You Can Feel That Staying Human Is Worth While, Even When It Can't Have Any Practical Result Whatsoever, You've Beaten Them.

Beauty Is Meaningless Until It Is Shared.

The Process [of Mass-media Deception] Has To Be Conscious, Or It Would Not Be Carried Out With Sufficient Precision, But It Also Has To Be Unconscious, Or It Would Bring With It A Feeling Of Falsity And Hence Of Guilt.... To Tell Deliberate Lies While Genuinely Believing In Them, To Forget Any Fact That Has Become Inconvenient, And Then, When It Becomes Necessary Again, To Draw It Back From Oblivion For Just So Long As It Is Needed, To Deny The Existence Of Objective Reality And All The While To Take Account Of The Reality Which One Denies All This Is Indispensably Necessary.

In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible. Things Like The Continuance Of British Rule In India, The Russian Purges And Deportations, The Dropping Of The Atom Bombs On Japan, Can Indeed Be Defended, But Only By Arguments Which Are Too Brutal For Most People To Face, And Which Do Not Square With The Professed Aims Of The Political Parties. Thus Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness.

How Right The Working Classes Are In Their "materialism." How Right They Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

The Tendency Of Advanced Capitalism Has Been To Enlarge The Middle Class And Not To Wipe It Out, As It Once Seemed Likely To Do.

One Must Choose Between God And Man, And All "radicals" And "progressives", From The Mildest Liberal To The Most Extreme Anarchist, Have In Effect Chosen Man.

Never, For Any Reason On Earth, Could You Wish For An Increase In Pain. Of Pain You Could Wish Only One Thing: That It Should Stop.

Do You Begin To See, Then, What Kind Of World We Are Creating? It Is The Exact Opposite Of The Stupid Hedonistic Utopias That The Old Reformers Imagined. A World Of Fear And Treachery And Torment, A World Of Trampling And Being Trampled Upon, A World Which Will Grow Not Less But More Merciless As It Refines Itself. Progress In Our World Will Be Progress Toward More Pain.

You Would Not Make The Act Of Submission Which Is The Price Of Sanity.

The Very Concept Of Objective Truth Is Fading Out Of The World. Lies Will Pass Into History.

Football, A Game In Which Everyone Gets Hurt And Every Nation Has Its Own Style Of Play Which Seems Unfair To Foreigners.

You Must Try Harder. It Is Not Easy To Become Sane.

Actions Are Held To Be Good Or Bad, Not On Their Own Merits, But According To Who Does Them. There Is Almost No Kind Of Outrage-torture, Imprisonment Without Trial, Assassination, The Bombing Of Civilians-which Does Not Change Its Moral Color When It Is Committed By 'our' Side. The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Atrocities Committed

In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy But Always Against One's Own Body.

The Hospital Is The Antechamber To The Tomb

Whoever Controls The Image And Information Of The Past Determines What And How Future Generations Will Think; Whoever Controls The Information And Images Of The Present Determines How Those Same People Will View The Past." "he Who Controls The Past Commands The Future. He Who Commands The Future Conquers The Past.

An Earthquake Is Such Fun When It Is Over.

Those Who 'abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.

Huge Events Like The Ukraine Famine Of 1933, Involving The Deaths Of Millions Of People, Have Actually Escaped The Attention Of The Majority Of English Russophiles.

. . . It Is A Corrupting Thing To Live One's Real Life In Secret. One Should Live With The Stream Of Life, Not Against It.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Want To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

So Much Of Left-wing Thought Is A Kind Of Playing With Fire By People Who Don't Even Know That Fire Is Hot.

On A Ruinous Wall I Came Upon A Poster Dating From The Previous Year And Announcing That ‘six Handsome Bulls’ Would Be Killed In The Arena On Such And Such A Date. How Forlorn Its Faded Colours Looked. Where Were The Handsome Bulls And The Handsome Bull-fighters Now? It Appeared That Even In Barcelona There Were Hardly Any Bullfights Nowadays - For Some Reason All The Best Matadors Were Fascists.

The Belly Comes Before The Soul.

And In The General Hardening Of Outlook That Set In ... Practices Which Had Been Long Abandoned ... -- Imprisonment Without Trial, The Use Of War Prisoners As Slaves, Public Executions, Torture To Extract Confessions, The Use Of Hostages And The Deportation Of Whole Populations -- Not Only Became Common Again, But Were Tolerated And Even Defended By People Who Considered Themselves Enlightened And Progressive.

True Freedom Is The Right To Say Something That Others Don't Want To Hear.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent, But The Tests That Have To Be Applied To Them Are Not, Of Course, The Same In All Cases.

It Said What He Would Have Said, If It Had Been Possible For Him To Set His Scattered Thoughts In Order. It Was The Product Of A Mind Similar To His Own, But Enormously More Powerful, More Systematic, Less Fear-ridden. The Best Books, He Perceived, Are Those That Tell You What You Know Already.

Good Writing Is Like A Windowpane.

Even Through The Shut Window Pane, The World Looked Cold.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

What Can The England Of 1940 Have In Common With The England Of 1840? But Then, What Have You In Common With The Child Of Five Whose Photograph Your Mother Keeps On The Mantelpiece? Nothing, Except That You Happen To Be The Same Person.

Winston Could Not Definitely Remember A Time When His Country Had Not Been At War...war Had Literally Been Continuous, Though Strictly Speaking It Had Not Always Been The Same War. The Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil.

When I Talk To Anyone Or Read The Writings Of Anyone Who Has Any Axe To Grind, I Feel That Intellectual Honesty And Balanced Judgement Have Simply Disappeared From The Face Of The Earth. Everyone's Thought Is Forensic, Everyone Is Simply Putting A "case" With Deliberate Suppression Of His Opponent's Point Of View, And, What Is More, With Complete Insensitiveness To Any Sufferings Except Those Of Himself And His Friends.

The Party Is Not Concerned With Perpetuating Its Blood But With Perpetuating Itself. Who Wields Power Is Not Important, Provided That The Hierarchical Structure Remains Always The Same.

No Advance In Wealth, No Softening Of Manners, No Reform Or Revolution Has Ever Brought Human Equality A Millimeter Nearer.

Always Eyes Watching You And The Voice Enveloping You. Asleep Or Awake, Indoors Or Out Of Doors, In The Bath Or Bed- No Escape. Nothing Was Your Own Except The Few Cubic Centimeters In Your Skull.

Good Prose Should Be Transparent, Like A Window Pane.

Everyone Believes In The Atrocities Of The Enemy And Disbelieves In Those Of His Own Side, Without Ever Bothering To Examine The Evidence.

All Art Is Propaganda; On The Other Hand, Not All Propaganda Is Art.

The Communism Of The English Intellectual Is Something Explicable Enough. It Is The Patriotism Of The Deracinated.

Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.

To Survive It Is Often Necessary To Fight And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself.

[...] You Can Get Anything In This World If You Genuinely Don't Want It.

Who Controls The Past Controls The Future. Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

A Generation Of The Unteachable Is Hanging Upon Us Like A Necklace Of Corpses.

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