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From The Proletarians Nothing Is To Be Feared. Left To Themselves, They Will Continue From Generation To Generation And From Century To Century, Working, Breeding, And Dying, Not Only Without Any Impulse To Rebel, But Without The Power Of Grasping That The World Could Be Other Than It Is.

-George Orwell

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From The Proletarians Nothing

George Orwell

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From The Proletarians Nothing Is To Be Feared. Left To Themselves, They Will Continue From Generation To Generation And From Century To Century, Working, Breeding, And Dying, Not Only Without Any Impulse To Rebel, But Without The Power Of Grasping That The World Could Be Other Than It Is.

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During Five Literary Generations Every Enlightened Person Had Despised Him, And At The End Of That Time Nine-tenths Of Those Enlightened Persons Are Forgotten And Kipling Is In Some Sense Still There.

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Whatever Is Funny Is Subversive, Every Joke Is Ultimately A Custard Pie... A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

It Had Never Occurred To Him That The Body Of A Woman Of Fifty, Blown Up To Monstrous Dimensions By Childbearing, Then Hardened, Roughened By Work Til It Was Coarse In The Grain Like An Overripe Turnip, Could Be Beautiful. But Is Was So, And After All, He Thought, Why Not?

You Believe That Reality Is Something Objective, External, Existing In Its Own Right. You Also Believe That The Nature Of Reality Is Self-evident. When You Delude Yourself Into Thinking That You See Something, You Assume That Everyone Else Sees The Same Thing As You. But I Tell You, Winston, That Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else. Not In The Individual Mind, Which Can Make Mistakes, And In Any Case Soon Perishes: Only In The Mind Of The Paty, Which Is Collective And Immortal.

Real Journalism Is Publishing Something That Somebody Else Does Not Want Published - The Rest Is Just Public Relations.

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It Is Not Possible For Any Thinking Person To Live In Such A Society As Our Own Without Wanting To Change It.

Thinking Person

Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Ordinary Human Feeling. Everything Will Be Dead Inside You. Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Love, Or Friendship, Or Joy Of Living, Or Laughter, Or Curiosity, Or Courage, Or Integrity. You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

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

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.

Tea Is One Of The Main Stays Of Civilization In This Country.

You Can't Live Life Without Consequences. They Occur Regardless Of The Decision. A Consequence Is An Outcome, Good Or Bad. You Can Live Life Without Regrets And Thats What Makes It Worth It. Or You Could Live With Regret And End Up Hanging Yourself But Thats Still Good. You Paid For The Rope So Your Feeding Someones Family. Something To Be Proud Of Before You Kick The Bucket

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.

[t]he Outcry Against Killing Women, If You Accept Killing At All, Is Sheer Sentimentality.:; Why Is It Worse To Kill A Woman Than A Man?

The More Men You've Had, The More I Love You.

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.

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.

The Stars Are A Free Show; It Don’t Cost Anything To Use Your Eyes

The Creatures Outside Looked From Pig To Man, And From Man To Pig, And From Pig To Man Again; But Already It Was Impossible To Say Which Was Which.

In A Time Of Universal Deceit - Telling The Truth Is A Revolutionary Act.

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

Perhaps A Man Really Dies When His Brain Stops, When He Loses The Power To Take In A New Idea.

Most Revolutionaries Are Potential Tories, Because They Imagine That Everything Can Be Put Right By Altering The Shape Of Society; Once That Change Is Effected, As It Sometimes Is, They See No Need For Any Other.

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Real Power Is Achieved When The Ruling Class Controls The Material Essentials Of Life, Granting And Withholding Them From The Masses As If They Were Privileges.

She Was Very Young...she Still Expected Something From Life, She Did Not Understand That To Push An Inconvenient Person Over A Cliff Solves Nothing.

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.

From The Totalitarian Point Of View, History Is Something To Be Created Rather Than Learned.

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Political Language

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

One Of The Effects Of A Safe And Civilized Life Is An Immense Over Sensitiveness Which Makes All The Primary Emotions Somewhat Disgusting.

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

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout Of Some Painful Illness.

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.

It Was Like Swimming Against A Current That Swept You Backwards However Hard You Struggled, And Then Suddenly Deciding To Turn Round And Go With The Current Instead Of Opposing It. Nothing Had Changed Except Your Own Attitude: The Predestined Thing Happened In Any Case.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

Rifles, Muskets, Long-bows And Hand-grenades Are Inherently Democratic Weapons. A Complex Weapon Makes The Strong Stronger, While A Simple Weapon - So Long As There Is No Answer To It - Gives Claws To The Weak.

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

One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing.

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.

Political Language... Is Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable, And To Give An Appearance Of Solidity To Pure Wind.

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If You Have No Money, Men Won't Care For You, Women Won't Love You; Won't, That Is, Care For You Or Love You The Last Little Bit That Matters.

Cricket Is A Game Full Or Forlorn Hopes And Sudden Dramatic Changes Of Fortune And Its Rules Are So Ill-defined That Their Interpretation Is Partly An Ethical Business.

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We Have Sunk So Low It Has Become The Obligation Of Every Decent, Thinking Individual To Re-state The Obvious!

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The Opinion That Art Should Have Nothing To Do With Politics Is Itself A Political Attitude.

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There, Comrades, Is The Answer To All Our Problems. It Is Summed Up In A Single Word-- Man

If You Kept The Small Rules, You Could Break The Big Ones.

To Hang On From Day To Day And From Week To Week, Spinning Out A Present That Had No Future, Seemed An Unconquerable Instinct, Just As One's Lungs Will Always Draw The Next Breath So Long As There Is Air Available.

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'

Antisemitism, For Instance, Is Simply Not The Doctrine Of A Grown-up Person.

We Have Now Sunk To A Depth At Which Restatement Of The Obvious Is The First Duty Of Intelligent Men.

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Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

For A Second, Two Seconds, They Had Exchanged An Equivocal Glance, And That Was The End Of The Story. But Even That Was A Memorable Event, In The Locked Loneliness In Which One Had To Live.

If He Were Allowed Contact With Foreigners He Would Discover That They Are Creatures Similar To Himself And That Most Of What He Has Been Told About Them Is Lies. The Sealed World In Which He Lives Would Be Broken, And The Fear, Hatred And Self-righteousness On Which His Morale Depends Might Evaporate.

England Will Still Be England, An Everlasting Animal, Stretching Into The Future And The Past And Like All Living Things Having The Power To Change Out Of All Recognition And Yet Remain The Same.

But The Problems Of Perpetuating A Hierarchical Society Go Deeper Than This. There Are Only Four Ways In Which A Ruling Group Can Fall From Power. Either It Is Conquered From Without, Or It Governs So Inefficiently That The Masses Are Stirred To Revolt, Or It Allows A Strong And Discontented Middle Group To Come Into Being, Or It Loses Its Own Self-confidence And Willingness To Govern.

Self Confidence

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.

The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.

What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

Friend Of Fatherless! Fountain Of Happiness! Lord Of The Swill-bucket! Oh, How My Soul Is On Fire When I Gaze At Thy Calm And Commanding Eye. Like The Sun In The Sky, Comrade Napoleon! Thou Are The Giver Of All Thy Creatures Love, Full Belly Twice A Day, Clean Straw To Roll Upon; Every Beast Great Or Small, Sleeps At Peace In His Stall, Thou Watchest Over All, Comrade Napoleon! Had I A Sucking-pig, Ere He Had Grown As Big Even As A Pint Bottle Or A A Rolling-pin He Should Have Learned To Be Faithful And True To Thee, Yes, His First Squeak Should Be Comrade Napoleon!

In A Society In Which There Is No Law, And In Theory No Compulsion, The Only Arbiter Of Behaviour Is Public Opinion. But Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law. When Human Beings Are Governed By "thou Shalt Not", The Individual Can Practise A Certain Amount Of Eccentricity: When They Are Supposedly Governed By "love" Or "reason", He Is Under Continuous Pressure To Make Him Behave And Think In Exactly The Same Way As Everyone Else.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

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.

To Do Anything That Suggested A Taste For Solitude, Even To Go For A Walk By Yourself, Was Always Slightly Dangerous. There Was A Word For It In Newspeak: Ownlife.

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.

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

Comrades!' He Cried. 'you Do Not Imagine, I Hope, That We Pigs Are Doing This In A Spirit Of Selfishness And Privilege? Many Of Us Actually Dislike Milk And Apples. I Dislike Them Myself. Our Sole Object In Taking These Things Is To Preserve Our Health. Milk And Apples (this Has Been Proved By Science, Comrades) Contain Substances Absolutely Necessary To The Well-being Of A Pig. We Pigs Are Brainworkers. The Whole Management And Organisation Of This Farm Depend On Us. Day And Night We Are Watching Over Your Welfare. It Is For Your Sake That We Drink The Milk And Eat Those Apples.

That Rifle Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Labourer's Cottage Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

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

Human Beings Were Behaving As Human Beings And Not As Cogs In The Capitalist Machine.

Take Pleasure In The Impact Of One Sound On Another.

The Secret Of Rulership Is To Combine A Belief In One’s Own Infallibility With A Power To Learn From Past Mistakes.

[a] World In Which It Is Wrong To Murder An Individual Civilian And Right To Drop A Thousand Tons Of High Explosive On A Residential Area Does Sometimes Make Me Wonder Whether This Earth Of Ours Is Not A Loony Bin Made Use Of By Some Other Planet. Not To Have A National Anthem Would Be Logical.

All True Tea Lovers Not Only Like Their Tea Strong, But Like It A Little Stronger With Each Year That Passes.

Comrades," He Said, "here Is A Point That Must Be Settled. The Wild Creatures, Such As Rats And Rabbits–are They Our Friends Or Our Enemies? Let Us Put It To The Vote. I Propose This Question To The Meeting: Are Rats Comrades?" The Vote Was Taken At Once, And It Was Agreed By An Overwhelming Majority That Rats Were Comrades. There Were Only Four Dissentients, The Three Dogs And The Cat, Who Was Afterwards Discovered To Have Voted On Both Sides.

When I See A Policeman With A Club Beating A Man On The Ground, I Don't Have To Ask Whose Side I'm On.

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.

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.

A Hideous Ecstasy Of Fear And Vindictiveness, A Desire To Kill, To Torture, To Smash Faces In With A Sledge Hammer, Seemed To Flow Through The Whole Group Of People Like An Electric Current, Turning One Even Against One's Will Into A Grimacing, Screaming Lunatic. And Yet The Rage That One Felt Was An Abstract, Undirected Emotion Which Could Be Switched From One Object To Another Like The Flame Of A Blowlamp.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

Of Pain You Could Wish Only One Thing: That It Should Stop. Nothing In The World Was So Bad As Physical Pain. In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

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.

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

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.

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.

The Masses Never Revolt Of Their Own Accord, And They Never Revolt Merely Because They Are Oppressed. Indeed, So Long As They Are Not Permitted To Have Standards Of Comparison, They Never Even Become Aware That They Are Oppressed.

History Has Stopped. Nothing Exists Except An Endless Present In Which The Party Is Always Right.

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

I Understand How. I Do Not Understand Why

The Educated Man Pictures A Horde Of Submen, Wanting Only A Day's Liberty To Loot His House, Burn His Books, And Set Him To Work Minding A Machine Or Sweeping Out A Lavatory. 'anything,' He Thinks, 'any Injustice, Sooner Than Let That Mob Loose.' He Does Not See That Since There Is No Difference Between The Mass Of Rich And Poor, There Is No Question Of Setting The Mob Loose. The Mob Is In Fact Loose Now, And--in The Shape Of Rich Men--is Using Its Power To Set Up Enormous Treadmills Of Boredom, Such As 'smart' Hotels.

But You Could Not Have Pure Love Or Pure Lust Nowadays. No Emotion Was Pure, Because Everything Was Mixed Up With Fear And Hatred. Their Embrace Had Been A Battle, The Climax A Victory. It Was A Blow Struck Against The Party. It Was A Political Act.

They Say That Time Heals All Things, They Say You Can Always Forget; But The Smiles And The Tears Across The Years They Twist My Heart Strings Yet!

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me: There Lie They, And Here Lie We Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

All Tyrannies Rule Through Fraud And Force, But Once The Fraud Is Exposed They Must Rely Exclusively On Force.

I Often Wondered Whether Any Of The Others Grasped That I Had Done It Solely To Avoid Looking A Fool.

Society Has Always Seemed To Demand A Little More From Human Beings Than It Will Get In Practice.

The Secret Of A Successful Restaurant Is Sharp Knives.

"a Minority Of One"... The Definition Of Insanity.

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.

I Always Disagree, However, When People End Up Saying That We Can Only Combat Communism, Fascism Or What Not If We Develop An Equal Fanaticism. It Appears To Me That One Defeats The Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.

In The Past The Need For A Hierarchal Form Of Society Has Been The Doctrine Specifically Of The High. It Had Been Preached By Kings And Aristocrats And The Priests, Lawyers And The Like Who Were Parasitical Upon Them, And It Had Generally Been Softened By Promises Of An Imaginary World Beyond The Grave.

He Had Moved From Thought To Words, And Now From Words To Actions.

There Exists A Huge Dump Of Worn-out Metaphors Which Have Lost All Evocative Power And Are Merely Used Because They Save People The Trouble Of Inventing Phrases For Themselves.

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To He A Failure, And Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks. It Is Rather The Same Thing That Is Happening To The English Language. It Becomes Ugly And Inaccurate Because Our Thoughts Are Foolish, But The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

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.

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

The Ruling Power Is Always Faced With The Question, ‘in Such And Such Circumstances, What Would You Do?’, Whereas The Opposition Is Not Obliged To Take Responsibility Or Make Any Real Decisions.

If One Harbours Anywhere In One's Mind A Nationalistic Loyalty Or Hatred, Certain Facts, Although In A Sense Known To Be True, Are Inadmissible.

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

We Know That No One Ever Seizes Power With The Intention Of Relinquishing It.

For After All, What Is There Behind, Except Money? Money For The Right Kind Of Education, Money For Influential Friends, Money For Leisure And Peace Of Mind, Money For Trips To Italy. Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

Men Use Up Their Lives In Heart-breaking Political Struggles, Or Get Themselves Killed In Civil Wars, Or Tortured In The Secret Prisons Of The Gestapo, Not In Order To Establish Some Central-heated, Air-conditioned, Strip-lighted Paradise, But Because They Want A World In Which Human Beings Love One Another Instead Of Swindling And Murdering One Another.

In All The Useful Arts The World Is Either Standing Still Or Going Backwards.

It Was A Bright Cold Day In April, And The Clocks Were Striking Thirteen.

Modern Writing At Its Worst Does Not Consist In Picking Out Words For The Sake Of Their Meaning And Inventing Images In Order To Make The Meaning Clearer. It Consists In Gumming Together Long Strips Of Words Which Have Already Been Set In Order By Someone Else, And Making The Results Presentable By Sheer Humbug. The Attraction Of This Way Of Writing Is That It Is Easy.

He Thought With A Kind Of Astonishment Of The Biological Uselessness Of Pain And Fear, The Treachery Of The Human Body Which Always Freezes Into Inertia At Exactly The Moment When A Special Effort Is Needed.

Sheer Egoism... Writers Share This Characteristic With Scientists, Artists, Politicians, Lawyers, Soldiers, Successful Businessmen - In Short, With The Whole Top Crust Of Humanity.

Probably The Battle Of Waterloo Was Won On The Playing-fields Of Eton, But The Opening Battles Of All Subsequent Wars Have Been Lost There.

Within Any Important Issue, There Are Always Aspects No One Wishes To Discuss.

They Were Governed By Private Loyalties Which They Did Not Question. What Mattered Were Individual Relationships, And A Completely Helpless Gesture, An Embrace, A Tear, A Word Spoken To A Dying Man, Could Have Value In Itself

Most People Approve Of Capital Punishment, But Most People Wouldn't Do The Hangman's Job.

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

We May Be Together For Another Six Months—a Year—there’s No Knowing. At The End We’re Certain To Be Apart. Do You Realize How Utterly Alone We Shall Be?

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

When One Watches Some Tired Hack On The Platform Mechanically Repeating The Familiar Phrases - Bestial Atrocities, Iron Heel, Blood-stained Tyranny, Free Peoples Of The World, Stand Shoulder To Shoulder - One Often Has A Curious Feeling That One Is Not Watching A Live Human Being But Some Kind Of Dummy, The Appropriate Noises Are Coming Out Of His Larynx, But His Brain Is Not Involved

Last Of All Came The Cat, Who Looked Round, As Usual, For The Warmest Place, And Finally Squeezed Herself In Between Boxer And Clover; There She Purred Contentedly Throughout Major's Speech Without Listening To A Word Of What He Was Saying.

He Was A Lonely Ghost Uttering A Truth That Nobody Would Ever Hear. But So Long As He Uttered It, In Some Obscure Way The Continuity Was Not Broken. It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.

Modern English, Especially Written English, Is Full Of Bad Habits Which Spread By Imitation And Which Can Be Avoided If One Is Willing To Take The Necessary Trouble.

There Will Be No Curiosity, No Enjoyment Of The Process Of Life. All Competing Pleasures Will Be Destroyed. But Always— Do Not Forget This, Winston— Always There Will Be The Intoxication Of Power, Constantly Increasing And Constantly Growing Subtler. Always, At Every Moment, There Will Be The Thrill Of Victory, The Sensation Of Trampling On An Enemy Who Is Helpless. If You Want A Picture Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face— Forever.

To The Future Or To The Past, To A Time When Thought Is Free, When Men Are Different From One Another And Do Not Live Alone— To A Time When Truth Exists And What Is Done Cannot Be Undone: From The Age Of Uniformity, From The Age Of Solitude, From The Age Of Big Brother, From The Age Of Doublethink — Greetings!

Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

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.

It Is Almost Universally Felt That When We Call A Country Democratic We Are Praising It; Consequently, The Defenders Of Every Kind Of Regime Claim That It Is A Democracy, And Fear That They Might Have To Stop Using The Word If It Were Tied Down To Any One Meaning.

Reality Is Inside The Skull.

At Any Given Moment, There Is A Sort Of All Pervading Orthodoxy, A General Tacit Agreement Not To Discuss Large And Uncomfortable Facts.

There Is Only One Way To Make Money At Writing, And That Is To Marry A Publisher's Daughter.

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

There Was Of Course No Way Of Knowing Whether You Were Being Watched At Any Given Moment. How Often, Or On What System, The Thought Police Plugged In On Any Individual Wire Was Guesswork. It Was Even Conceivable That They Watched Everybody All The Time. But At Any Rate They Could Plug In Your Wire Whenever They Wanted To. You Had To Live-did Live, From Habit That Became Instinct-in The Assumption That Every Sound You Made Was Overheard, And, Except In Darkness, Every Movement Scrutinized.

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

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To Be A Failure, But Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks.

Winston Worked In The Records Department (a Single Branch Of The Ministry Of Truth) Editing And Writing For The Times. He Dictated Into A Machine Called A Speakwrite. Winston Would Receive Articles Or News-items Which For One Reason Or Another It Was Thought Necessary To Alter, Or, In Newspeak, Rectify. If, For Example, The Ministry Of Plenty Forecast A Surplus, And In Reality The Result Was Grossly Less, Winston's Job Was To Change Previous Versions So The Old Version Would Agree With The New One.

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 Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.

The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous.

The Upper Class Desire To Remain So, The Middle Class Wish To Overthrow The Upper Class, And The Lower Class Want A Classless System.

Writing A Novel Is Agony.

If I Had To Make A List Of Six Books Which Were To Be Preserved When All Others Were Destroyed, I Would Certainly Put Gulliver's Travels Among Them.

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 Birds Sang, The Proles Sang. The Party Did Not Sing. All Round The World, In London And New York, In Africa And Brazil, And In The Mysterious, Forbidden Lands Beyond The Frontiers, In The Streets Of Paris And Berlin, In The Villages Of The Endless Russian Plain, In The Bazaars Of China And Japan — Everywhere Stood The Same Solid Unconquerable Figure, Made Monstrous By Work And Childbearing, Toiling From Birth To Death And Still Singing.

Power-worship Blurs Political Judgment Because It Leads, Almost Unavoidably, To The Belief That Present Trends Will Continue. Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

A Sahib Has Got To Act Like A Sahib; He Has Got To Appear Resolute, To Know His Own Mind And Do Definite Things.

Good Prose Should Be Transparent, Like A Window Pane.

The Whole Experience Of Being Hit By A Bullet Is Very Interesting And I Think Worth Describing In Detail.

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.

The Atmosphere Of Orthodoxy Is Always Damaging To Prose, And Above All It Is Completely Ruinous To The Novel, The Most Anarchical Of All Forms Of Literature.

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

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.

I Have No Wish To Take Life, Not Even Human Life

In Any Form Of Art Designed To Appeal To Large Numbers Of People,...[t]he Rich Man Is Usually 'bad', And His Machinations Are Invariably Frustrated.:; 'good Poor Man Defeats Bad Rich Man' Is An Accepted Formula.

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

Napoleon Is Always Right.

Don't You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? Has It Ever Occurred To You, Winston, That By The Year 2050, At The Very Latest, Not A Single Human Being Will Be Alive Who Could Understand Such A Conversation As We Are Having Now?

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.

War Is Evil, But It Is Often The Lesser Evil.

Each Generation Imagines Itself To Be More Intelligent Than The One That Went Before It, And Wiser Than The One That Comes After It.

The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity.

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

Probably The Best Nonsense Poetry Is Produced Gradually And Accidentally, By Communities Rather Than By Individuals.

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.

Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist. This Is Elementary Common Sense. If You Hamper The War Effort Of One Side, You Automatically Help Out That Of The Other. Nor Is There Any Real Way Of Remaining Outside Such A War As The Present One. In Practice, 'he That Is Not With Me Is Against Me'.

The Child Thinks Of Growing Old As An Almost Obscene Calamity, Which For Some Mysterious Reason Will Never Happen To Itself. All Who Have Passed The Age Of Thirty Are Joyless Grotesques, Endlessly Fussing About Things Of No Importance And Staying Alive Without, So Far As The Child Can See, Having Anything To Live For. Only Child Life Is Real Life.

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.

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.

The Whole Climate Of Thought Will Be Different. In Fact There Will Be No Thought, As We Understand It Now. Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking - Not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

To A Surprising Extent The War-lords In Shining Armour, The Apostles Of Martial Virtues, Tend Not To Die Fighting When Time Comes. History Is Full Of Ignominious Getaways By The Great And Famous.

The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity. When There Is A Gap Between One's Real And One's Declared Aims, One Turns, As It Were, Instinctively To Long Words And Exhausted Idioms, Like A Cuttlefish Squirting Out Ink.

Political Language

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip, But The Really Well-trained Dog Is The One That Turns His Somersault When There Is No Whip.

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