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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.

-George Orwell

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I Am Well Acquainted

George Orwell

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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.

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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.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future.

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. If One Gets Rid Of These Habits One Can Think More Clearly, And To Think Clearly Is A Necessary First Step Toward Political Regeneration: So That The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous And Is Not The Exclusive Concern Of Professional [or Scholarly] Writers.

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.

Day By Day And Almost Minute By Minute The Past Was Brought Up To Date. In This Way Every Prediction Made By The Party Could Be Shown By Documentary Evidence To Have Been Correct; Nor Was Any Item Of News, Or Any Expression Of Opinion, Which Conflicted With The Needs Of The Moment, Ever Allowed To Remain On Record. All History Was A Palimpsest, Scraped Clean And Reinscribed Exactly As Often As Was Necessary.

All Propaganda Is Lies, Even When One Is Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

We Do Not Merely Destroy Our Enemies; We Change Them.

He Wondered Vaguely Whether In The Abolished Past It Had Been A Normal Experience To Lie In Bed Like This, In The Cool Of A Summer Evening, A Man And A Woman With No Clothes On, Making Love When They Chose, Talking Of What They Chose, Not Feeling Any Compulsion To Get Up, Simply Lying There And Listening To Peaceful Sounds Outside. Surely There Could Never Have Been A Time When That Seemed Ordinary?

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

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

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.

Every Record Has Been Destroyed Or Falsified, Every Book Has Been Rewritten, Every Picture Has Been Repainted, Every Statue And Street Building Has Been Renamed, Every Date Has Been Altered. And That Process Is Continuing Day Be Day And Minute By Minute. History Has Stopped. Nothing Exists Except The Endless Present In Which The Party Is Always Right.

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.

It Is Deliberate Policy To Keep Even The Favoured Groups Somewhere Near The Brink Of Hardship, Because A General State Of Scarcity Increases The Importance Of Small Privileges And Thus Magnifies The Distinction Between One Group And Another.

The Existence Of Good Bad Literature—the Fact That One Can Be Amused Or Excited Or Even Moved By A Book That One's Intellect Simply Refuses To Take Seriously—is A Reminder That Art Is Not The Same Thing As Cerebration.

The Life Of An Animal Is Misery And Slavery: That Is The Plain Truth.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

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

At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.

Patriotism Has Nothing To Do With Conservatism. It Is Actually The Opposite Of Conservatism, Since It Is A Devotion To Something That Is Always Changing And Yet Is Felt To Be Mystically The Same.

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

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

The Mass Of The Rich And The Poor Are Differentiated By Their Incomes And Nothing Else,and The Average Millionaire Is Only The Average Dishwasher Dressed In A New Suit.

Threats To Freedom Of Speech, Writing And Action, Though Often Trivial In Isolation, Are Cumulative In Their Effect And, Unless Checked, Lead To A General Disrespect For The Rights Of The Citizen.

We May Find In The Long Run That Tinned Food Is A Deadlier Weapon Than The Machine-gun.

Most People Who Bother With The Matter At All Would Admit That The English Language Is In A Bad Way, But It Is Generally Assumed That We Cannot By Conscious Action Do Anything About It.

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.

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

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?

One Does Not Establish A Dictatorship In Order To Safeguard A Revolution; One Makes A Revolution In Order To Establish A Dictatorship.

Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered By Self-deception.

There Were Sins That Were Too Subtle To Be Explained, And There Were Others That Were Too Terrible To Be Clearly Mentioned. For Example, There Was Sex, Which Was Always Smouldering Just Under The Surface And Which Suddenly Blew Up Into A Tremendous Row When I Was About Twelve.

Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue. By This Test Beggars Fail, And For This They Are Despised. If One Could Earn Even Ten Pounds A Week At Begging, It Would Become A Respectable Profession Immediately. A Beggar, Looked At Realistically, Is Simply A Businessman, Getting His Living, Like Other Businessmen, In The Way That Comes To Hand. He Has Not, More Than Most Modem People, Sold His Honour; He Has Merely Made The Mistake Of Choosing A Trade At Which It Is Impossible To Grow Rich.

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.

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.

Processions, Meetings, Military Parades, Lectures, Waxwork Displays, Film Shows, Telescreen Programs All Had To Be Organized; Stands Had To Be Erected, Effigies Built, Slogans Coined, Songs Written, Rumours Circulated, Photographs Faked.

The Writers I Care About Most And Never Grow Tired Of Are: Shakespeare, Swift, Fielding, Dickens, Charles Reade, Flaubert And, Among Modern Writers, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot And D. H. Lawrence. But I Believe The Modern Writer Who Has Influenced Me Most Is Somerset Maugham, Whom I Admire Immensely For His Power Of Telling A Story Straightforwardly And Without Frills.

The Common People, On The Whole, Are Still Living In The World Of Absolute Good And Evil From Which The Intellectuals Have Long Since Escaped.

At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Ideas Of Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question. It Is Not Exactly Forbidden To Say This, That Or The Other, But It Is 'not Done' To Say It... Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing, Either In The Popular Press Or In The High-brow Periodicals.

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

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.

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.

You Asked Me Once,' Said O'brien, 'what Was In Room 101. I Told You That You Knew The Answer Already. Everyone Knows It. The Thing That Is In Room 101 Is The Worst Thing In The World.

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

If You Set Yourself To It, You Can Live The Same Life, Rich Or Poor. You Can Keep On With Your Books And Your Ideas. You Just Got To Say To Yourself, "i'm A Free Man In Here" - He Tapped His Forehead - "and You're All Right.

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.

When The White Man Turns Tyrant It Is His Own Freedom That He Destroys.he Becomes A Sort Of Hollow,posing Dummy,the Conventional Figure Of A Sahib.for It Is The Condition Of His Rule That He Shall Spend His Life In Trying To Impress The "natives",and So In Every Crisis He Has Got To Do What The "natives" Expect Of Him.he Wears A Mask And His Face Grows To Fit It.

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.

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

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.

International Football Is The Continuation Of War By Other Means.

Literature Is Doomed If Liberty Of Thought Perishes.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

Some People Have A Knack, For Example, Of Being Able To Tell When Someone's Lying To Them. They May Not Know What The Truth Is, But They Can Tell When Someone Is Trying To Lead Them Astray Or Sell Them Something Shady. I Think He Had That Ability To An Amazing Degree. I Also Think He Thought, Without Saying It Explicitly, That You Can Convince A Crowd Of Something That's Not True More Easily Than You Can One Person At A Time.

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

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.

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

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

The Human Beings Did Not Hate Animal Farm Any Less Now That It Was Prospering; Indeed, They Hated It More Than Ever.

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.

The Major Problem Of Our Time Is The Decay In The Belief In Personal Immortality, And It Cannot Be Dealt With While The Average Human Being Is Either Drudging Like An Ox Or Shivering In Fear Of The Secret Police... How Right [the Working Classes] Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

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 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.

It Struck Him That In Moments Of Crisis One Is Never Fighting Against An External Enemy, But Always Against One’s Own Body... On The Battlefield, In The Torture Chamber, On A Sinking Ship, The Issues That You Are Fighting For Are Always Forgotten, Because The Body Swells Up Until It Fills The Universe, And Even When You Are Not Paralysed By Fright Or Screaming With Pain, Life Is A Moment-to-moment Struggle Against Hunger Or Cold Or Sleeplessness, Against A Sour Stomach Or An Aching Tooth.

It Was Intended That When Newspeak Had Been Adopted Once And For All And Oldspeak Forgotten, A Heretical Thought...should Be Literally Unthinkable, At Least So Far As Thought Is Dependent On Words.

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?

Every Joke Is A Tiny Revolution

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.

The Mistake You Make, Don't You See,is In Thinking One Can Live In A Corrupt Society Without Being Corrupt Oneself. After All, What Do You Achieve By Refusing To Make Money? You're Trying To Behave As Though One Could Stand Right Outside Our Economic System. But One Can't. One's Got To Change The System, Or One Changes Nothing. One Can't Put Things Right In A Hole-and-corner Way, If You Take My Meaning.

It Was With The Last Revolution And The Coming Of Ingsoc (inglish/english Socialism) That The Latest High Learnt How To Keep Their Position Permanently - By Cultivating Ignorance Among The Other Classes And By Constantly Surveying Them Through The Thought Police. Part Of This Strategy Included The Maintenance Of A State Of Continual Warfare, Which Goldstein Discussed In The Third Chapter. The Three Major Powers Were Not Fighting This Perpetual War For Victory; They Were Fighting To Keep A State Of Emergency Always Present As The Surest Guarantee Of Authoritarianism.

Within Certain Limits, It Is Actually True That The Less Money You Have, The Less You Worry.

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

If I Had Understood The Situation A Bit Better I Should Probably Have Joined The Anarchists.

The One Certain Thing Was That Death Never Came At An Expected Moment.

The Intellectual Is Different From The Ordinary Man, But Only In Certain Sections Of His Personality, And Even Then Not All The Time.

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

...the Object Of Waging A War Is Always To Be In A Better Position In Which To Wage Another War.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule , Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils. You Can Let The Nazis Rule The World : That Is Evil; Or You Can Overthrow Them By War , Which Is Also Evil. There Is No Other Choice Before You, And Whichever You Choose You Will Not Come Out With Clean Hands.

The Best Books... Are Those That Tell You What You Know Already.

Freedom Is The Freedom To Say That Two Plus Two Make Four. If That Is Granted, All Else Follows.

How Could You Make Appeal To The Future When Not A Trace Of You, Not Even An Anonymous Word Scribbled On A Piece Of Paper, Could Physically Survive?

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

The Hospital Is The Antechamber To The Tomb

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.

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.

Clover Was A Stout Motherly Mare Approaching Middle Life, Who Had Never Quite Got Her Figure Back After Her Fourth Foal.

Confession Is Not Betrayal. What You Say Or Do Doesn't Matter; Only Feelings Matter. If They Could Make Me Stop Loving You-that Would Be The Real Betrayal.

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.

Never Use A Long Word Where A Short One Will Do.

All Men Are Enemies. All Animals Are Comrades

The Inflated Style Is Itself A Kind Of Euphemism. A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outlines And Covering Up All The Details. The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity.

Political Language

During Part Of 1941 And 1942, When The Luftwaffe Was Busy In Russia, The German Radio Regaled Its Home Audience With Stories Of Devastating Air Raids On London. Now, We Are Aware That Those Raids Did Not Happen. But What Use Would Our Knowledge Be If The Germans Conquered Britain? For The Purpose Of A Future Historian, Did Those Raids Happen, Or Didn't They? The Answer Is: If Hitler Survives, They Happened, And If He Falls They Didn't Happen.

Her Feelings Were Her Own, And Could Not Be Altered From Outside. It Would Not Have Occurred To Her That An Action Which Is Ineffectual Thereby Becomes Meaningless. If You Loved Someone, You Loved Him, And When You Had Nothing Else To Give, You Still Gave Him Love.

The Very Word 'war', Therefore, Has Become Misleading. It Would Probably Be Accurate To Say That By Becoming Continuous War Has Ceased To Exist. ... War Is Peace.

To See What Is In Front Of One’s Nose Needs A Constant Struggle.

Preventive War Is A Crime Not Easily Committed By A Country That Retains Any Traces Of Democracy.

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.

Creeds Like Pacifism Or Anarchism, Which Seem On The Surface To Imply A Complete Renunciation Of Power, Rather Encourage This Habit Of Mind. For If You Have Embraced A Creed Which Appears To Be Free From The Ordinary Dirtiness Of Politics ... The More You Are In The Right (and) Everybody Else Should Be Bullied Into Thinking Otherwise.

What Can You Do Against The Lunatic Who Is More Intelligent Than Yourself, Who Gives Your Arguments A Fair Hearing And Then Simply Persists In His Lunacy?

The Mute Protest In Your Own Bones

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.

I Believe That The Bbc, In Spite Of The Stupidity Of Its Foreign Propaganda And The Unbearable Voices Of Its Announcers, Is Very Truthful. It Is Generally Regarded Here As More Reliable Than The Press.

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.

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.

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

After 40, A Man Is Responsible For His Face.

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.

But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

But What Is Work And What Is Not Work? Is It Work To Dig, To Carpenter, To Plant Trees, To Fell Trees, To Ride, To Fish, To Hunt, To Feed Chickens, To Play The Piano, To Take Photographs, To Build A House, To Cook, To Sew, To Trim Hats, To Mend Motor Bicycles? All Of These Things Are Work To Somebody, And All Of Them Are Play To Somebody. There Are In Fact Very Few Activities Which Cannot Be Classed Either As Work Or Play According As You Choose To Regard Them.

Not To Expose Your True Feelings To An Adult Seems To Be Instinctive From The Age Of Seven Or Eight Onwards.

Dickens Is One Of Those Authors Who Are Well Worth Stealing.

The Relative Freedom Which We Enjoy Depends Of Public Opinion. The Law Is No Protection. Governments Make Laws, But Whether They Are Carried Out, And How The Police Behave, Depends On The General Temper In The Country. If Large Numbers Of People Are Interested In Freedom Of Speech, There Will Be Freedom Of Speech, Even If The Law Forbids It; If Public Opinion Is Sluggish, Inconvenient Minorities Will Be Persecuted, Even If Laws Exist To Protect Them.

Every Line Of Serious Work That I Have Written Since 1936 Has Been Written, Directly Or Indirectly Against Totalitarianism And For Democratic Socialism As I Understand It.

Democratic Socialism

It's Not So Much Staying Alive, It's Staying Human That's Important. What Counts Is That We Don't Betray Each Other.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

It Was Given Out That The Animals There Practised Cannibalism, Tortured One Another With Red-hot Horseshoes, And Had Their Females In Common. This Was What Came Of Rebelling Against The Laws Of Nature, Frederick And Pilkington Said.

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 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

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

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

In General, The Greater The Understanding, The Greater The Delusion; The More Intelligent, The Less Sane.

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.

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

Doublethink Means The Power Of Holding Two Contradictory Beliefs In One's Mind Simultaneously, And Accepting Both Of Them.

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

If Publishers And Editors Exert Themselves To Keep Certain Topics Out Of Print, It Is Not Because They Are Frightened Of Prosecution But Because They Are Frightened Of Public Opinion. In This Country Intellectual Cowardice Is The Worst Enemy A Writer Or Journalist Has To Face, And That Fact Does Not Seem To Me To Have Had The Discussion It Deserves.

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

Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.

The Paris Slums Are A Gathering-place For Eccentric People - People Who Have Fallen Into Solitary, Half-mad Grooves Of Life And Given Up Trying To Be Normal Or Decent. Poverty Frees Them From Ordinary Standards Of Behavior, Just As Money Frees People From Work.

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.

In My Opinion, Nothing Has Contributed So Much To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country And That Every Act Of Its Rulers Must Be Excused, If Not Imitated. And So For The Last Ten Years, I Have Been Convinced That The Destruction Of The Soviet Myth Was Essential If We Wanted A Revival Of The Socialist Movement.

Socialist Countries

There Is No Test Of Literary Merit Except Survival, Which Is Itself An Index To Majority Opinion.

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.

There Is No Such Thing As A Naval Dictatorship.

The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

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

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

I'd Like To Start A Religion. That's Where The Money Is.

Facts, At Any Rate, Could Not Be Kept Hidden. They Could Be Tracked Down By Inquiry, They Could Be Squeezed Out Of You By Torture. But If The Object Was Not To Stay Alive But To Stay Human, What Difference Did It Ultimately Make? They Could Not Alter Your Feelings, For That Matter You Could Not Alter Them Yourself, Even If You Wanted To. They Could Lay Bare In The Utmost Detail Everything That You Had Done Or Said Or Thought; But The Inner Heart, Whose Workings Were Mysterious Even To Yourself, Remained Impregnable.

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

A Man Receiving Charity Always Hates His Benefactor- It Is A Fixed Characteristic Of Human Nature

Where This Age Differs From Those Immediately Preceding It Is That A Liberal Intelligentsia Is Lacking. Bully-worship, Under Various Disguises, Has Become A Universal Religion, And Such Truisms As That A Machine-gun Is Still A Machine-gun Even When A "good" Man Is Squeezing The Trigger Have Turned Into Heresies Which It Is Actually Becoming Dangerous To Utter.

Part Of The Reason For The Ugliness Of Adults, In A Child's Eyes, Is That The Child Is Usually Looking Upwards, And Few Faces Are At Their Best When Seen From Below.

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

It Was Soon Noticed That When Ever There Was Work To Be Done The Cat Could Never Be Found.

To Exchange One Orthodoxy For Another Is Not Necessarily An Advance. The Enemy Is The Gramophone Mind, Whether Or Not One Agrees With The Record That Is Being Played At The Moment.

In Some Ways She Was Far More Acute Than Winston, And Far Less Susceptible To Party Propaganda. Once When He Happened In Some Connection To Mention The War Against Eurasia, She Startled Him By Saying Casually That In Her Opinion The War Was Not Happening. The Rocket Bombs Which Fell Daily On London Were Probably Fired By The Government Of Oceania Itself, "just To Keep The People Frightened."

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic.

Empowering Others

In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing.

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.

The Smell Of Her Hair, The Taste Of Her Mouth, The Feeling Of Her Skin Seemed To Have Got Inside Him, Or Into The Air All Round Him. She Had Become A Physical Necessity.

You're Only A Rebel From The Waist Downwards,' He Told Her.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Preferred To Be A Lunatic, A Minority Of One.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

If Human Equality Is To Be Forever Averted -- If The High, As We Have Called Them, Are To Keep Their Places Permanently -- Then The Prevailing Mental Condition Must Be Controlled Insanity.

History Has To Move In A Certain Direction, Even If It Has To Be Pushed That Way By Neurotics.

War Against A Foreign Country Only Happens When The Moneyed Classes Think They Are Going To Profit From It.

There Is A Minority Of Gifted, Willfuf People Who Are Determined To Live Their Own Lives To The End, And Writers Belong In This Class.

...in The Negative Part Of Professor's Hayek's Thesis There Is A Great Deal Of Truth. It Cannot Be Said Too Often - At Any Rate, It Is Not Being Said Nearly Often Enough - That Collectivism Is Not Inherently Democratic, But, On The Contrary, Gives To A Tyrannical Minority Such Powers As The Spanish Inquisitors Never Dreamt Of.

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.

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.

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

The Atom Bombs Are Piling Up In The Factories, The Police Are Prowling Through The Cities, The Lies Are Streaming From The Loudspeakers, But The Earth Is Still Going Round The Sun.

Until One Has Some Kind Of Professional Relationship With Books, One Does Not Discover How Bad The Majority Of Them Are.

It Is Difficult For A Statesman Who Still Has A Political Future To Reveal Everything That He Knows: And In A Profession In Which One Is A Baby At 50 And Middle-aged At Seventy-five, It Is Natural That Anyone Who Has Not Actually Been Disgraced Should Feel That He Still Has A Future.

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

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.

We Are In A Strange Period Of History In Which A Revolutionary Has To Be A Patriot And A Patriot Has To Be A Revolutionary.

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

The Essential Point Here Is That All People With Small, Insecure Incomes Are In The Same Boat And Ought To Be Fighting On The Same Side. Probably We Could Do With A Little Less Talk About' Capitalist' And 'proletarian' And A Little More About The Robbers And The Robbed.

Economic Inequality

To Be Corrupted By Totalitarianism, One Does Not Have To Live In A Totalitarian Country.

Totalitarianism

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

The Food Crank Is By Definition A Person Willing To Cut Himself Off From Human Society In The Hopes Of Adding Five Years Onto The Life Of His Carcase; That Is, A Person Out Of Touch With Common Humanity.

Common Humanity

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

You Must Be An Intellectual. A Normal Person Would Never Believe A Thing Like That.

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.

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

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

Whatever Goes Upon Two Legs Is An Enemy. Whatever Goes Upon Four Legs, Or Has Wings, Is A Friend.

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

I Am Struck Again By The Fact That As Soon As A Working Man Gets An Official Post In The Trade Union Or Goes Into Labour Politics, He Becomes Middle-class Whether He Will Or No. Ie. By Fighting Against The Bourgeoisie He Becomes A Bourgeois. The Fact Is That You Cannot Help Living In The Manner Appropriate And Developing The Ideology Appropriate To Your Income.

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!

Good Prose Should Be Transparent, Like A Window Pane.

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

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

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