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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.

-George Orwell

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The Existence Of Good

George Orwell

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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.

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Has It Ever Occurred To You,' He Said, 'that The Whole History Of English Poetry Has Been De-termined By The Fact That The English Language Lacks Rhymes?

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 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

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

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.

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.

I Suppose There Is No Place In The World Where Snobbery Is Quite So Ever-present Or Where It Is Cultivated In Such Refined And Subtle Forms As In An English Public School. Here At Least One Cannot Say That English ‘education’ Fails To Do Its Job. You Forget Your Latin And Greek Within A Few Months Of Leaving School — I Studied Greek For Eight Or Ten Years, And Now, At Thirty-three, I Cannot Even Repeat The Greek Alphabet — But Your Snobbishness, Unless You Persistently Root It Out Like The Bindweed It Is, Sticks By You Till Your Grave.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

The Cat Joined The Re-education Committee And Was Very Active In It For Some Days. She Was Seen One Dag Sitting On A Roof And Talking To Some Sparrows Who Were Just Out Of Her Reach. She Was Telling Them That All Animals Were Now Comrades And That Any Sparrow Who Chose Could Come And Perch On Her Paw; But The Sparrows Kept Their Distance.

We Control Matter Because We Control The Mind. Reality Is Inside The Skull.

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

Contrary To Popular Belief, The Past Was Not More Eventful Than The Present. If It Seems So It Is Because When You Look Backward Things That Happened Years Apart Are Telescoped Together, And Because Very Few Of Your Memories Come To You Genuinely Virgin.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Freedom Of The Press

The Catholic And The Communist Are Alike In Assuming That An Opponent Cannot Be Both Honest And Intelligent.

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

By Revolution We Become More Ourselves, Not Less.

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.

Manchester Is The Belly And Guts Of The Nation

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.

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

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

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.

If You Have Embraced A Creed Which Appears To Be Free From The Ordinary Dirtiness Of Politics - A Creed From Which You Yourself Cannot Expect To Draw Any Material Advantage - Surely That Proves That You Are In The Right?

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.

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

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

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

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.

Your Worst Enemy, He Reflected, Was Your Nervous System. At Any Moment The Tension Inside You Was Liable To Translate Itself Into Some Visible Symptom.

One Wants To Live, Of Course, Indeed One Only Stays Alive By Virtue Of The Fear Of Death.

Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered By Self-deception.

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.

Napoleon Is Always Right.

Either We All Live In A Decent World, Or Nobody Does.

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

Sometimes They Threaten You With Something - Something You Can't Stand Up To, Can't Even Think About. And Then You Say, Don't Do It To Me, Do It To Somebody Else, Do It To So-and-so. And Perhaps You Might Pretend, Afterwards, That It Was Only A Trick And That You Just Said It To Make Them Stop And Didn't Mean It. But That Isn't True. At The Time When It Happens You Do Mean It. You Think There's No Other Way Of Saving Yourself, And You're Quite Ready To Save Yourself That Way. You Want It To Happen To The Other Person. You Don't Give A Damn What They Suffer. All You Care Is Yourself.

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

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.

Truth Becomes Untruth If Uttered By Your Enemy

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.

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

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

In The Nineteenth Century Some Parts Of The World Were Unexplored, But There Was Almost No Restriction On Travel.:; Up To 1914 You Did Not Need A Passport For Any Country Except Russia.:; The European Emigrant, If He Could Scrape Together A Few Pounds For The Passage, Simply Set Sail For America Or Australia, And When He Got There No Questions Were Asked.:; In The Eighteenth Century It Had Been Quite Normal And Safe To Travel In A Country With Which Your Own Country Was At War.

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.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

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 Two Aims Of The Party Are To Conquer The Whole Surface Of The Earth And To Extinguish Once And For All The Possibility Of Independent Thought. There Are Therefore Two Great Problems Which The Party Is Concerned To Solve. One Is How To Discover, Against His Will, What Another Human Being Is Thinking, And The Other Is How To Kill Several Hundred Million People In A Few Seconds Without Giving Warning Beforehand.

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 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

When I Joined The Militia I Had Promised Myself To Kill One Fascist - After All, If Each Of Us Killed One They Would Soon Be Extinct.

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

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.

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

The Enemies Of Intellectual Liberty Always Try To Present Their Case As A Plea For Discipline Versus Individualism. The Issue Truth-versus-untruth Is As Far As Possible Kept In The Background.

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

I Do Not Think One Can Assess A Writer's Motives Without Knowing Something Of His Early Development. His Subject Matter Will Be Determined By The Age He Lives In ... But Before He Ever Begins To Write He Will Have Acquired An Emotional Attitude From Which He Will Never Completely Escape.

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.

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

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

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.

A Scrupulous Writer In Every Sentence That He Writes Will Ask Himself. . . What Am I Trying To Say? What Words Will Express It?...and He Probably Asks Himself. . . Could I Put It More Shortly? But You Are Not Obliged To Go To All This Trouble. You Can Shirk It By Simply Throwing Open Your Mind And Letting The Ready-made Phrases Come Crowding In. They Will Construct Your Sentences For You

People Invent New Machines And Improve Existing Ones Almost Unconsciously, Rather As A Somnambulist Will Go Walking In His Sleep. The Interesting Puzzle In Our Times Is That We So Willingly Sleepwalk Through The Process Of Reconstituting The Conditions Of Human Existence.

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

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

He Wears A Mask, And His Face Grows To Fit It.

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

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

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.

No One Is Patriotic About Taxes.

You Must Have Seen Great Changes Since You Were A Young Man," Said Winston Tentatively. The Old Man's Pale Blue Eyes Moved From The Darts Board To The Bar, And From The Bar To The Door Of The Gents ... "the Beer Was Better," He Said Finally. "and Cheaper! When I Was A Young Man, Mild Beer - Wallop We Used To Call It - Was Fourpence A Pint. That Was Before The War, Of Course." "which War Was That?" Said Winston. "it's All Wars," Said The Old Man Vaguely. He Took Up His Glass, And His Shoulders Straightened Again. "'ere's Wishing You The Very Best Of 'ealth!

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.

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

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

I Have The Most Evil Memories Of Spain, But I Have Very Few Bad Memories Of Spaniards.

I Do Not Wish To Comment On The Work; If It Does Not Speak For Itself, It Is A Failure.

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

The 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.

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?

Never Use A Metaphor, Simile, Or Other Figure Of Speech Which You Are Used To Seeing In Print. Never Use A Long Word Where A Short One Will Do. If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out Always Cut It Out. Never Use The Passive Voice Where You Can Use The Active. Never Use A Foreign Phrase A Scientific Word Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent. Break Any Of These Rules Sooner Than Say Anything Outright Barbarous.

Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

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.

The Artist Is To Be Exempt From The Moral Laws That Are Binding On Ordinary People. Just Pronounce The Magic Word "art," And Everything Is O.k. Rotting Corpses With Snails Crawling Over Them Are O.k.; Kicking Little Girls In The Head Is O.k.; Even A Film Like L'age D'or Is O.k.

The Revolution Will Be Complete When The Language Is Perfect.

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 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.

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.

In Moulmein, In Lower Burma, I Was Hated By Large Numbers Of People - The Only Time In My Life That I Have Been Important Enough For This To Happen To Me.

Most People Get A Fair Amount Of Fun Out Of Their Lives, But On Balance Life Is Suffering, And Only The Very Young Or The Very Foolish Imagine Otherwise.

World Suffering

It Is Brought Home To You...that It Is Only Because Miners Sweat Their Guts Out That Superior Persons Can Remain Superior.

Every Joke Is A Tiny Revolution

Certainly All "progressive" Thought, Has Assumed Tacitly That Human Beings Desire Nothing Beyond Ease, Security, And Avoidance Of Pain... Hitler, Because In His Joyless Mind He Feels It With Exceptional Strength, Knows That Human Beings Don't Only Want Comfort, Safety, Short Working-hours, Hygiene, Birth-control And, In General, Common Sense; They Also, At Least Intermittently, Want Struggle And Self-sacrifice, Not To Mention Drums, Flags And Loyalty-parades. However They May Be As Economic Theories, Fascism And Nazism Are Psychologically Far Sounder Than Any Hedonistic Conception Of Life.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

He Was Conscious Of Nothing Except The Blankness Of The Page In Front Of Him, The Itching Of The Skin Above His Ankle, The Blaring Of The Music, And A Slight Booziness Caused By The Gin.

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.

The Mute Protest In Your Own Bones

We Were Once Told That The Aeroplane Had "abolished Frontiers"; Actually It Is Only Since The Aeroplane Became A Serious Weapon That Frontiers Have Become Definitely Impassable.

Do You Know Why You’re Here? Shall I Tell You Why We Brought You Here? To Cure You.to Make You Sane.

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

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

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

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

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

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

Totalitarianism

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?

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

A Human Being Is Primarily A Bag For Putting Food Into.

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

War Is War. The Only Good Human Being Is A Dead One.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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?

Totalitarianism, However, Does Not So Much Promise An Age Of Faith As An Age Of Schizophrenia. 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. Such A Society, No Matter How Long It Persists, Can Never Afford To Become Either Tolerant Or Intellectually Stable.

In My Opinion Nothing Has Contributed More To The Corruption Of The Original Idea Of Socialism As The Belief That Russia Is A Socialist Country.

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

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

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

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

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

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

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

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

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

One Sometimes Gets The Impression That The Mere Words ' Socialism ' And ' Communism ' Draw Towards Them With Magnetic Force Every Fruit-juice Drinker, Nudist, Sandal-wearer, Sex-maniac, Quaker, 'nature Cure' Quack, Pacifist, And Feminist In England.

Only Old Benjamin Professed To Remember Every Detail Of His Long Life And To Know That Things Never Had Been, Nor Ever Could Be Much Better Or Much Worse--hunger, Hardship, And Disappointment Being, So He Said, The Unalterable Law Of Life.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

He Loved Big Brother.

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

In Certain Kinds Of Writing, Particularly In Art Criticism And Literary Criticism, It Is Normal To Come Across Long Passages Which Are Almost Completely Lacking In Meaning.

Beauty Is Meaningless Until It Is Shared.

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

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

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

Patriotism Is Usually Stronger Than Class Hatred, And Always Stronger Than Internationalism.

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.

The Ministry Of Peace Concerns Itself With War, The Ministry Of Truth With Lies, The Ministry Of Love With Torture And The Ministry Of Plenty With Starvation. These Contradictions Are Not Accidental , Nor Do They Result From From Ordinary Hypocrisy: They Are Deliberate Exercises In Doublethink

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.

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Don’t You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? In The End We Shall Make Thoughtcrime Literally Impossible, Because There Will Be No Words In Which To Express It.

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.

The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon.

She Had Had Her Momentary Flowering, A Year, Perhaps, Of Wildrose Beauty, And Then She Had Suddenly Swollen Like A Fertilized Fruit And Grown Hard And Red And Coarse, And Then Her Life Had Been Laundering, Scrubbing, Laundering, First For Children, Then For Grandchildren, Over Thirty Years. At The End Of It She Was Still Singing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

To Die Hating Them, That Was Freedom.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

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.

I Had Been In London Innumerable Times, And Yet Till That Day I Had Never Noticed One Of The Worst Things About London-the Fact That It Costs Money Even To Sit Down.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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