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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.

-George Orwell

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If You Set Yourself

George Orwell

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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.

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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.

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.

On Each Landing, Opposite The Lift Shaft, The Poster With The Enormous Face Gazed From The Wall. It Was One Of Those Pictures Which Are So Contrived That The Eyes Follow You About When You Move. Big Brother Is Watching You, The Caption Beneath It Ran.

There Is A Geographical Element In All Belief-saying What Seem Profound Truths In India Have A Way Of Seeming Enormous Platitudes In England, And Vice Versa . Perhaps The Fundamental Difference Is That Beneath A Tropical Sun Individuality Seems Less Distinct And The Loss Of It Less Important.

Poverty Frees Them From Ordinary Standards Of Behaviour, Just As Money Frees People From Work.

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.

Myths Which Are Believed In Tend To Become True.

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.

Between Pigs And Human Beings There Was Not And There Need Not Be Any Clash Of Interest Whatsoever.

Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking

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

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

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 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.

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.

The Seven Commandments: Whatever Goes Upon Two Legs Is An Enemy. Whatever Goes Upon Four Legs, Or Has Wings, Is A Friend. No Animal Shall Wear Clothes. No Animal Shall Sleep In A Bed. No Animal Shall Drink Alcohol. No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal. All Animals Are Equal.

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.

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

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.

When I Sit Down To Write A Book, I Do Not Say To Myself, 'i Am Going To Produce A Work Of Art.' I Write It Because There Is Some Lie That I Want To Expose, Some Fact To Which I Want To Draw Attention, And My Initial Concern Is To Get A Hearing.

The Organizing Principal For Any Culture Is War.

Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print.

Let's Face It: Our Lives Are Miserable, Laborious, And Short.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith—as Mysterious As Faith Itself.

Mysterious Things

Imperialism As He [kipling] Sees It Is A Sort Of Forcible Evangelising.

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

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.

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

I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside... There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man.

No Man Should Be Allowed To Be The President Who Does Not Understand Hogs, Or Hasn't Been Around A Manure Pile.

By Using Stale Metaphors, Similes And Idioms, You Save Much Mental Effort, At The Cost Of Leaving Your Meaning Vague, Not Only For Your Reader But For Yourself.

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.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

All Men Are Enemies. All Animals Are Comrades

Orthodoxy Is The Ability To Say Two And Two Make Five When Faith Requires It.

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

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.

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

...every Human Being Is Doomed To Die, Which Is The Greatest Of All Failures.

It [england] Is A Family In Which The Young Are Generally Thwarted And Most Of The Power Is In The Hands Of Irresponsible Uncles And Bedridden Aunts.

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

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

But If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought.

Political Language

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

His Whole Mind And Body Seemed To Be Afflicted With An Unbearable Sensitivity, A Sort Of Transparency, Which Made Every Movement, Every Sound, Every Contact, Every Word That He Had To Speak Or Listen To, An Agony. Even In Sleep He Could Not Altogether Escape Form Her Image.

Never Use A Foreign Phrase, A Scientific Word, Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent.

In A Way, The World-view Of The Party Imposed Itself Most Successfully On People Incapable Of Understanding It. They Could Be Made To Accept The Most Flagrant Violations Of Reality, Because They Never Fully Grasped The Enormity Of What Was Demanded Of Them, And Were Not Sufficiently Interested In Public Events To Notice What Was Happening. By Lack Of Understanding They Remained Sane. They Simply Swallowed Everything, And What They Swallowed Did Them No Harm, Because It Left No Residue Behind, Just As A Grain Of Corn Will Pass Undigested Through The Body Of A Bird.

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

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.

Stupidity Was As Necessary As Intelligence, And As Difficult To Attain.

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.

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

The Real Division Is Not Between Conservatives And Revolutionaries But Between Authoritarians And Libertarians.

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.

Progress And Reaction Have Both Turned Out To Be Swindles. Seemingly, There Is Nothing Left But Quietism - Robbing Reality Of Its Terrors By Simply Submitting To It.

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

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

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

[political] Prose Consists Less And Less Of Words Chosen For The Sake Of Their Meaning, And More And More Of Phrases Tacked Together Like The Sections Of A Prefabricated Hen-house.

Political Language

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

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

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.

It's A Wonderful Feeling To Have A Niece Like You Because You Are Always So Dear You Are So Dear No Matter The Year But All Throughout Each Day Of The Year There Could Hardly Be A Town In The South Of England Where You Could Throw A Brick Without Hitting The Niece Of A Bishop.

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.

Apparently Nothing Will Ever Teach These People That The Other 99 % Of The Population Exist.

...the Consciousness Of Being At War, And Therefore In Danger, Makes The Handing-over Of All Power To A Small Caste Seem The Natural, Unavoidable Condition Of Survival.

There Are Some Ideas So Wrong That Only A Very Intelligent Person Could Believe In Them.

And If Our Book Consumption Remains As Low As It Has Been, At Least Let Us Admit That It Is Because Reading Is A Less Exciting Pastime Than Going To The Dogs, The Pictures Or The Pub, And Not Because Books, Whether Bought Or Borrowed, Are Too Expensive.

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.

The Moralist And The Revolutionary Are Constantly Undermining One Another. Marx Exploded A Hundred Tons Of Dynamite Beneath The Moralist Position, And We Are Still Living In The Echo Of That Tremendous Crash. But Already, Somewhere Or Other, The Sappers Are At Work And Fresh Dynamite Is Being Tamped In Place To Blow Marx At The Moon. Then Marx, Or Somebody Like Him, Will Come Back With Yet More Dynamite, And So The Process Continues, To An End We Cannot Foresee.

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.

He Was Alone. The Past Was Dead, The Future Was Unimaginable.

The People Will Believe What The Media Tells Them They Believe.

The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.

Advertising Is The Rattling Of A Stick Inside A Swill Bucket.

They Clichés Will Construct Your Sentences For You - Even Think Your Thoughts For You, To A Certain Extent - And At Need They Will Perform The Important Service Of Partially Concealing Your Meaning Even From Yourself.

However Much You Deny The Truth, The Truth Goes On Existing.

It Is Fatal To Look Hungry. It Makes People Want To Kick You.

Napoleon Is Always Right.

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

Joyce Is A Poet And Also An Elephantine Pedant.

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.

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.

At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Take Away Freedom Of Speech, And The Creative Faculties Dry Up.

Freedom Of Speech

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.

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

This Work Was Strictly Voluntary, But Any Animal Who Absented Himself From It Would Have His Rations Reduced By Half.

While The Game Of Deadlocks And Bottle-necks Goes On, Another More Serious Game Is Also Being Played. It Is Governed By Two Axioms. One Is That There Can Be No Peace Without A General Surrender Of Sovereignty: The Other Is That No Country Capable Of Defending Its Sovereignty Ever Surrenders It. If One Keeps These Axioms In Mind One Can Generally See The Relevant Facts In International Affairs Through The Smoke-screen With Which The Newspapers Surround Them.

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.

It Is Also True That One Can Write Nothing Readable Unless One Constantly Struggles To Efface One's Own Personality. Good Prose Is Like A Windowpane.

Every War, When It Comes, Or Before It Comes, Is Represented Not As A War But As An Act Of Self-defense Against A Homicidal Maniac.

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.

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.

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.

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.

By ' Patriotism ' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life , Which One Believes To Be The Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People.

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

If There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

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'

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

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

A Socialist United States Of Europe Seems To Me The Only Worth-while Political Objective Today

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.

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

In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible... Thus, Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging, And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness... Political Language [is] Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable.

Political Language

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.

Language Ought To Be The Joint Creation Of Poets And Manual Workers.

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.

The Books One Reads In Childhood, And Perhaps Most Of All The Bad And Good Bad Books, Create In One's Mind A Sort Of False Map Of The World, A Series Of Fabulous Countries Into Which One Can Retreat At Odd Moments Throughout The Rest Of Life, And Which In Some Cases Can Survive A Visit To The Real Countries Which They Are Supposed To Represent.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

All The War-propaganda, All The Screaming And Lies And Hatred, Comes Invariably From People Who Are Not Fighting.

And Yet, Just For A Moment, What Almost Frightening Power Had Sounded In That Cry From Only A Few Hundred Throats! Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

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.

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.

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One.

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

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

And It Is A Great Thing To Die In Your Own Bed, Though It Is Better Still To Die In Your Boots.

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

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

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

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.

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.

But The Thing That I Saw In Your Face No Power Can Disinherit: No Bomb That Ever Burst Shatters The Crystal Spirit.

I Loathed The Game, And Since I Could See No Pleasure Or Usefulness In It, It Was Very Difficult For Me To Show Courage At It. Football, It Seemed To Me, Is Not Really Played For The Pleasure Of Kicking A Ball About, But Is A Species Of Fighting.

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.

What Opinions The Masses Hold, Or Do Not Hold, Is Looked Upon As A Matter Of Indifference. They Can Be Granted Intellectual Liberty Becasue They Have No Intellect.

The Animals Were Happy As They Had Never Conceived It Possible To Be. Every Mouthful Of Food Was An Acute Positive Pleasure, Now That It Was Truly Their Own Food, Produced By Themselves And For Themselves, Not Doled Out To Them By A Grudging Master.

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

Weakness Is Strength.

All Animals Are Equal, But Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others.

All Political Thinking For Years Past Has Been Vitiated In The Same Way. People Can Foresee The Future Only When It Coincides With Their Own Wishes, And The Most Grossly Obvious Facts Can Be Ignored When They Are Unwelcome.

Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache. They Wanted To Produce A Perfect Society By An Endless Continuation Of Something That Had Only Been Valuable Because It Was Temporary. The Wider Course Would Be To Say That There Are Certain Lines Along Which Humanity Must Move, The Grand Strategy Is Mapped Out, But Detailed Prophecy Is Not Our Business. Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.

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

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.

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.

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

The Typical Socialist... A Prim Little Man With A White-collar Job, Usually A Secret Teetotaler And Often With Vegetarian Leanings.

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

The Party Told You To Reject The Evidence Of Your Eyes And Ears. It Was Their Final, Most Essential Command. His Heart Sank As He Thought Of The Enormous Power Arrayed Against Him, The Ease With Which Any Party Intellectual Would Overthrow Him In Debate, The Subtle Arguments Which He Would Not Be Able To Understand, Much Less Answer. And Yet He Was In The Right! They Were Wrong And He Was Right.

It Was Almost Normal For People Over Thirty To Be Frightened Of Their Own Children

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

The Main Motive For Nonattachment Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

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.

[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.

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.

For A Creative Writer Possession Of The 'truth' Is Less Important Than Emotional Sincerity.

For If Leisure And Security Were Enjoyed By All Alike, The Great Mass Of Human Beings Who Are Normally Stupefied By Poverty Would Become Literate And Would Learn To Think For Themselves; And When Once They Had Done This, They Would Sooner Or Later Realise That The Privileged Minority Had No Function, And They Would Sweep It Away. In The Long Run, A Hierarchical Society Was Only Possible On A Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance.

There Is Hardly Such A Thing As A War In Which It Makes No Difference Who Wins. Nearly Always One Side Stands More Of Less For Progress, The Other Side More Or Less For Reaction.

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.

Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law.

Truth Becomes Untruth If Uttered By Your Enemy

All Left-wing Parties In The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something Which They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. They Have Internationalist Aims, And At The Same Time They Struggle To Keep Up A Standard Of Life With Which Those Aims Are Incompatible. We All Live By Robbing Asiatic Coolies, And Those Of Us Who Are 'enlightened' All Maintain That Those Coolies Ought To Be Set Free; But Our Standard Of Living, And Hence Our 'enlightenment,' Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue.

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.

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.

The Object Of Power Is Power.

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

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

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.

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.

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

By 'nationalism' I Mean First Of All The Habit Of Assuming That Human Beings Can Be Classified Like Insects And That Whole Blocks Of Millions And Tens Of Millions Of People Can Be Confidently Labeled 'good' Or 'bad'...by 'patriotism' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life, Which One Believes To Be Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People. Patriotism Is Of Its Nature Defensive, Both Militarily And Culturally. Nationalism, On The Other Hand, Is Inseparable From The Desire For Power.

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.

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.

Prolonged, Indiscriminate Reviewing Of Books Is A Quite Exceptionally Thankless, Irritating And Exhausting Job. It Not Only Involves Praising Trash But Constantly Inventing Reactions Towards Books About Which One Has No Spontaneous Feeling Whatever.

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.

If Thought Corrupts Language, Language Can Also Corrupt Thought. A Bad Usage Can Spread By Tradition And Imitation Even Among People Who Should And Do Know Better.

The Aims Of These Three Groups Are Entirely Irreconcilable. The Aim Of The High Is To Remain Where They Are. The Aim Of The Middle Is To Change Places With The High. The Aim Of The Low, When They Have An Aim-for It Is An Abiding Characteristic Of The Low That They Are Too Much Crushed By Drudgery To Be More Than Intermittently Conscious Of Anything Outside Their Daily Lives -is To Abolish All Distinctions And Create A Society In Which All Men Shall Be Equal.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

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

To Write Or Even Speak English Is Not A Science But An Art. There Are No Reliable Words.... Whoever Writes English Is Involved In A Struggle That Never Lets Up Even For A Sentence.

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.

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.

After 40, A Man Is Responsible For His Face.

The Plant Is Blind But It Knows Enough To Keep Pushing Upwards Towards The Light, And It Will Continue To Do This In The Face Of Endless Discouragements.

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

Records Told The Same Tale, Then The Lie Passed Into History And Became Truth.

And The Bigger The Fall, The Bigger The Joke. It Would Be Better Fun To Throw A Custard Pie At A Bishop Than At A Curate.

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.

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.

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.

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

There Are Some Things Only Intellectuals Are Crazy Enough To Believe.

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."

In Places This Book Is A Little Over-written, Because Mr Blunden Is No More Able To Resist A Quotation Than Some People Are To Refuse A Drink.

The Fact Is That Every War Suffers A Kind Of Progressive Degradation With Every Month That It Continues, Because Such Things As Individual Liberty And A Truthful Press Are Simply Not Compatible With Military Efficiency.

I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

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.

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