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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.

-George Orwell

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Is The English Press

George Orwell

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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.

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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 Prime Necessities For Success In Life Are Money, Athleticism, Tailor Made Clothes And A Charming Smile.

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

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

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

The Words Kept Coming Back To Him, Statement Of A Mystical Truth And A Palpable Absurdity.

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.

Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

Men Are Only As Good As Their Technical Development Allows Them To Be.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

Scientific Education For The Masses Will Do Little Good, And Probably A Lot Of Harm, If It Simply Boils Down To More Physics, More Chemistry, More Biology, Etc To The Detriment Of Literature And History. Its Probable Effect On The Average Human Being Would Be To Narrow The Range Of His Thoughts And Make Him More Than Ever Contemptuous Of Such Knowledge As He Did Not Possess.

The Paperweight Was The Room He Was In, And The Coral Was Julia's Life And His Own, Fixed In A Sort Of Eternity At The Heart Of The Crystal.

It Was True That There Was No Such Person As Comrade Oglivy, But A Few Lines Of Print And A Couple Of Faked Photographs Would Soon Bring Him Into Existence... Comrade Oglivy, Who Had Never Existed In The Present, Now Existed In The Past, And When Once The Act Of Forgery Was Forgotten, He Would Exist Just As Authentically, And Upon The Same Evidence, As Charlemagne Or Julius Caesar.

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.

Freedom Of The Press, If It Means Anything At All, Means The Freedom To Criticize And Oppose

Freedom Of The Press

The Ministry Of Truth, Which Concerned Itself With News, Entertainment, Education And Fine Arts. The Ministry Of Peace, Which Concerned Itself With War. The Ministry Of Love, Which Maintained Law And Order. And The Ministry Of Plenty, Which Is Responsible For Economic Affairs. Their Names, In Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv And Miniplenty

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

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.

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

The Object Of Powder Is Powder.

Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.

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

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

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

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

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.

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.

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

By The Time You Have Perfected Any Style Of Writing, You Have Always Outgrown It.

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.

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

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.

If You Turn The Other Cheek, You Will Get A Harder Blow On It Than You Got On The First One. This Does Not Always Happen, But It Is To Be Expected, And You Ought Not To Complain If It Does Happen.

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

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 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.

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!

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

I Think I Exist,' He Said Wearily. 'i Am Conscious Of My Own Identity. I Was Born, And I Shall Die. I Have Arms And Legs. I Occupy A Particular Point In Space. No Other Solid Object Can Occupy The Same Point Simultaneously.

Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else.

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.

Take Pleasure In The Impact Of One Sound On Another.

I Understand How. I Do Not Understand Why

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

The Only Imaginative Prose Writer Of The Slightest Value Who Has Appeared Among The English-speaking Races For Some Years Past.

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

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

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

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.

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

Telling The Truth

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.

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

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

A Family With The Wrong Members In Control; That, Perhaps, Is As Near As One Can Come To Describing England In A Phrase.

A Totalitarian State Is In Effect A Theocracy, And Its Ruling Caste, In Order To Keep Its Position, Has To Be Thought Of As Infallible. But Since, In Practice, No One Is Infallible, It Is Frequently Necessary To Rearrange Past Events In Order To Show That This Or That Mistake Was Not Made, Or That This Or That Imaginary Triumph Actually Happened.

Windmill Or No Windmill, He Said, Life Would Go On As It Had Always Gone On--that Is, Badly.

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

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 Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil, And It Followed That Any Past Or Future Agreement With Him Was Impossible.

The Only Thing For Which We Can Combine Is The Underlying Ideal Of Socialism; Justice And Liberty. But It Is Hardly Strong Enough To Call This Ideal Underlying. It Is Almost Completely Forgotten. It Has Been Buried Beneath Layer After Layer Of Doctnaire Priggishness, Party Squabbles And Half-backed Progressivism Until It Is Like A Diamond Hidden Under A Monition Of Dung. The Job Of The Socialist Is To Get It Out Again. Justice And Liberty! Those Are The Words That Have Got To Ring Like A Bugle Across The World.

His Answer To Every Problem, Every Setback Was “i Will Work Harder!” —which He Had Adopted As His Personal Motto.

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.

For, When You Are Approaching Poverty, You Make One Discovery Which Outweighs Some Of The Others. You Discover Boredom And Mean Complications And The Beginnings Of Hunger, But You Also Discover The Great Redeeming Feature Of Poverty: The Fact That It Annihilates The Future. Within Certain Limits, It Is Actually True That The Less Money You Have, The Less You Worry.

People Simply Disappeared, Always During The Night. Your Name Was Removed From The Registers, Every Record Of Everything You Had Ever Done Was Wiped Out, Your One-time Existence Was Denied And Then Forgotten. You Were Abolished, Annihilated: Vaporized Was The Usual Word.

We Have Become Too Civilized To Grasp The Obvious. For The Truth Is Very Simple. To Survive You Often Have To Fight, And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself. War Is Evil, And It Is Often The Lesser Evil. Those Who Take The Sword Perish By The Sword, And Those Who Don't Take The Sword Perish By Smelly Diseases.

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.

No Doubt Alcohol, Tobacco, And So Forth, Are Things That A Saint Must Avoid; But Sainthood Is Also A Thing That Human Beings Must Avoid.

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

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."

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 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.

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?

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

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.

Is Not Anyone With Any Degree Of Mental Honesty Conscious Of Telling Lies All Day Long, Both In Talking And Writing, Simply Because Lies Will Fall Into Artistic Shape When Truth Will Not?

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.

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 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.

A Scrupulous Writer, In Every Sentence That He Writes, Will Ask Himself At Least Four Questions, Thus: 1. What Am I Trying To Say? 2. What Words Will Express It? 3. What Image Or Idiom Will Make It Clearer? 4. Is This Image Fresh Enough To Have An Effect?

Political Language

...men Can Only Be Highly Civilized While Other Men, Inevitably Less Civilized, Are There To Guard And Feed Them.

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.

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

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.

...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.

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.

In The End I Worked Out An Anarchistic Theory That All Government Is Evil, That The Punishment Always Does More Harm Than The Crime And That People Can Be Trusted To Behave Decently If Only You Will Let Them Alone.

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.

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

The Past Was Erased, The Erasure Was Forgotten, The Lie Became The Truth.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.

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

The Idea Really Came To Me The Day I Got My New False Teeth.

If There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

What Is To Be Expected Of Them Is Not Treachery, Or Physcial Cowardice, But Stupidity, Unconscious Sabotage, An Infallible Instinct For Doing The Wrong Thing.

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.

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.

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.

The Planting Of A Tree, Especially One Of The Long-living Hardwood Trees, Is A Gift Which You Can Make To Posterity At Almost No Cost And With Almost No Trouble, And If The Tree Takes Root It Will Far Outlive The Visible Effect Of Any Of Your Other Actions, Good Or Evil.

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.

Totalitarianism, If Not Fought Against, Could Triumph Anywhere.

The Whole Idea Of Revenge And Punishment Is A Childish Day-dream. Properly Speaking, There Is No Such Thing As Revenge. Revenge Is An Act Which You Want To Commit When You Are Powerless And Because You Are Powerless: As Soon As The Sense Of Impotence Is Removed, The Desire Evaporates Also.

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.

[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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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?

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

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

As A Rule They Will Refuse Even To Sample A Foreign Dish, They Regard Such Things As Garlic And Olive Oil With Disgust, Life Is Unliveable To Them Unless They Have Tea And Puddings.

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.

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 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.

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.

A Mass Of Latin Words Falls Upon The Facts Like Soft Snow, Blurring The Outline And Covering Up All The Details. 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 Spurting Out Ink. In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics'. All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred, And Schizophrenia. When The General Atmosphere Is Bad, Language Must Suffer.

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.

[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.

Tragedy, He Precieved, Belonged To The Ancient Time, To A Time When There Were Still Privacy, Love, And Friendship, And When The Members Of A Family Stood By One Another Without Needing To Know The Reason.

Love And Friendship

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One.

The More Intelligent, The Less Sane

Ignorance In 1984

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

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

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'

Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache... Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.

Man Serves The Interests Of No Creature Except Himself.

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.

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.

In Our Time Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible.

Political Language

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

I Hate Purity, I Hate Goodness! I Don't Want Virtue To Exist Anywhere. I Want Everyone To Be Corrupt To The Bones.

Weakness Is Strength.

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

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

There Were Times When The Fact Of Impending Death Seemed As Palpable As The Bed They Lay On, And They Would Cling Together With A Sort Of Despairing Sensuality, Like A Damned Soul Grasping At His Last Morsel Of Pleasure When The Clock Is Within Five Minutes Of Striking. But There Were Also Times When They Had The Illusion Not Only Of Safety But Of Permanence.

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

The Belly Comes Before The Soul.

... What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Told Truthfully.

In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics.' All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred And Schizophrenia.

Political Language

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.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent.

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

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.

All Through My Boyhood I Had A Profound Conviction That I Was No Good, That I Was Wasting My Time, Wrecking My Talents, Behaving With Monstrous Folly And Wickedness And Ingratitude-and All This, It Seemed, Was Inescapable, Because I Lived Among Laws Which Were Absolute, Like The Law Of Gravity, But Which It Was Not Possible For Me To Keep.

Mrs Weaver Nosed Among The Books, Too Dim-witted To Grasp That They Were In Alphabetical Order.

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

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.

They Had Come To A Time When No One Dared Speak His Mind, When Fierce, Growling Dogs Roamed Everywhere, And When You Had To Watch Your Comrades Torn To Pieces After Confessing To Shocking Crimes.

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.

It Is Impossible To Found A Civilization On Fear And Hatred And Cruelty. It Would Never Endure.' 'why Not?' 'it Would Have No Vitality. It Would Disintegrate. It Would Commit Suicide.

Perhaps One Did Not Want To Be Loved So Much As To Be Understood.

Until They Became Conscious They Will Never Rebel, And Until After They Have Rebelled They Cannot Become Conscious.

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

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

All People Who Have Reached The Point Of Becoming Nations Tend To Despise Foreigners, But There Is Not Much Doubt That The English-speaking Races Are The Worst Offenders. One Can See This From The Fact That As Soon As They Become Fully Aware Of Any Foreign Race They Invent An Insulting Nickname For It.

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

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

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

It's A Beautiful Thing, The Destruction Of Words.

Revolutions Only Effect A Radical Improvement When The Masses Are Alert And Know How To Chuck Out Their Leaders As Soon As The Latter Have Done Their Job.

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

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.

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

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

So Long As I Remain Alive And Well I Shall Continue To Feel Strongly About Prose Style, To Love The Surface Of The Earth, And To Take A Pleasure In Solid Objects And Scraps Of Useless Information.

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.

Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking--not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

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.

Big Brother Is Watching You.

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.

A Society Becomes Totalitarian When Its Structure Becomes Flagrantly Artificial: That Is, When Its Ruling Class Has Lost Its Function But Succeeds In Clinging To Power By Force Or Fraud.

Objective Truth

Sanity Was Statistical. It Was Merely A Question Of Learning To Think As They Thought.

Sanity Is Not Statistical.

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

Why Should Be Fruit Be Held Inferior To The Flower?

If One Looks Closely One Sees That There Is No Essential Difference Between A Beggar's Livelihood And That Of Numberless Respectable People. Beggars Do Not Work, It Is Said; But Then, What Is Work? A Navvy Works By Swinging A Pick. An Accountant Works By Adding Up Figures. A Beggar Works By Standing Out Of Doors In All Weathers And Getting Varicose Veins, Chronic Bronchitis, Etc. It Is A Trade Like Any Other; Quite Useless, Of Course - But Then, Many Reputable Trades Are Quite Useless.

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

Every Life Viewed From The Inside Is A Series Of Defeats.

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

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

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.

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