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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

-George Orwell

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The Ministry Of Truth,

George Orwell

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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

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If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself. You Must Know All The While That It Is There, But Until It Is Needed You Must Never Let It Emerge Into Your Consciousness In Any Shape That Can Be Given A Name.

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.

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."

For Weeks Past He Had Been Making Ready For This Moment, And It Had Never Crossed His Mind That Anything Would Be Needed Except Courage. The Actual Writing Would Be Easy. All He Had To Do Was To Transfer To Paper The Interminable Restless Monologue That Had Been Running Inside His Head, Literally For Years.

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.

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

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.

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.

A Man Who Gives A Good Account Of Himself Is Probably Lying, Since Any Life When Viewed From The Inside Is Simply A Series Of Defeats.

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

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.

I Sometimes Think That The Price Of Liberty Is Not So Much Eternal Vigilance As Eternal Dirt.

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

All Writers Are Vain, Selfish And Lazy, And At The Very Bottom Of Their Motives Lies A Mystery.

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

The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, But He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Political Language

Atrocities Committed

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

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.

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.

It Was Not The Man's Brain That Was Speaking; It Was His Larynx.

Poverty Is Spiritual Halitosis.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.

And In The General Hardening Of Outlook That Set In ... Practices Which Had Been Long Abandoned ... -- Imprisonment Without Trial, The Use Of War Prisoners As Slaves, Public Executions, Torture To Extract Confessions, The Use Of Hostages And The Deportation Of Whole Populations -- Not Only Became Common Again, But Were Tolerated And Even Defended By People Who Considered Themselves Enlightened And Progressive.

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

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.

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.

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

Telling The Truth

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

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

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

If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out, Always Cut It Out

Figures Of Speech

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.

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

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

There Are Some Situations From Which One Can Only Escape By Acting Like A Devil Or A Lunatic.

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.

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.

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

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.

One Must Choose Between God And Man, And All "radicals" And "progressives", From The Mildest Liberal To The Most Extreme Anarchist, Have In Effect Chosen Man.

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

I Know It Is The Fashion To Say That Most Of Recorded History Is Lies Anyway. I Am Willing To Believe That History Is For The Most Part Inaccurate And Biased, But What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Truthfully Written.

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

One Has To Belong To The Intelligentsia To Believe Things Like That: No Ordinary Man Could Be Such A Fool.

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.

The Party Is Not Interested In The Overt Act. The Thought Is All We Care About.

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.

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.

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?

Autobiography Is Only To Be Trusted When It Reveals Something Disgraceful.

The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

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.

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.

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

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

Some Ideas Are So Stupid That Only Intellectuals Believe Them.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Belly Comes Before The Soul.

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

You Were The Dead; Theirs Was The Future.

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

To Accept An Unorthodoxy Is Always To Inherit Unresolved Contradictions

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.

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

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

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

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.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Wish To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings. If One Could Follow It To Its Psychological Roots, One Would, I Believe, Find That The Main Motive For "non-attachment" Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

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.

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

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

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

I'm Fat, But I'm Thin Inside. Has It Ever Struck You That There's A Thin Man Inside Every Fat Man, Just As They Say There's A Statue Inside Every Block Of Stone?

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.

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

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

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

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality. In Left-wing Circles It Is Always Felt That There Is Something Slightly Disgraceful In Being An Englishman And That It Is A Duty To Snigger At Every English Institution, From Horse Racing To Suet Puddings. It Is A Strange Fact, But It Is Unquestionably True That Almost Any English Intellectual Would Feel More Ashamed Of Standing To Attention During God Save The King Than Of Stealing From A Poor Box.

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

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.

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

There Is No Swifter Route To The Corruption Of Thought Than Through The Corruption Of Language

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

The Organizing Principal For Any Culture Is War.

There Is No Such Thing As A Naval Dictatorship.

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

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.

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?

If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

The Truth, It Is Felt, Becomes Untruth When Your Enemy Utters It.

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

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

I Had The Lonely Child's Habit Of Making Up Stories And Holding Conversations With Imaginary Persons, And I Think From The Very Start My Literary Ambitions Were Mixed Up With The Feeling Of Being Isolated And Undervalued. I Knew That I Had A Facility With Words And A Power Of Facing Unpleasant Facts, And I Felt That This Created A Sort Of Private World In Which I Could Get My Own Back For My Failure In Everyday Life.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

The Ideal Set Up By The Party Was Something Huge, Terrible, And Glittering-a World Of Steel And Concrete, Of Monstrous Machines And Terrifying Weapons-a Nation Of Warriors And Fanatics, Marching Forward In Perfect Unity, All Thinking The Same Thoughts And Shouting The Same Slogans, Perpetually Working, Fighting, Triumphing, Persecuting-three Hundred Million People All With The Same Face.

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.

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.

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

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

How Right The Working Classes Are In Their "materialism." How Right They Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

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

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.

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.

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

It Is The Same In All Wars; The Soldiers Do The Fighting, The Journalists Do The Shouting, And No True Patriot Ever Gets Near A Front-line Trench, Except On The Briefest Of Propaganda Tours.

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.

If There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

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

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

Never Have Ideas About Children, And Never Have Ideas For Them.

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.

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

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

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.

Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else. Not In The Individual Mind, Which Can Make Mistakes, And In Any Case Soon Perishes: Only In The Mind Of The Party, Which Is Collective And Immortal.

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.

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

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

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.

She's Beautiful,' He Murmured. 'she's A Metre Across The Hips, Easily,' Said Julia. 'that Is Her Style Of Beauty,' Said Winston.

...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.

War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.

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

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

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

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!

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

We Shall Meet In The Place Where There Is No Darkness.

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

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.

[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.

Happiness Can Exist Only In Acceptance.

No One I Met At This Time -- Doctors, Nurses, Practicantes, Or Fellow-patients -- Failed To Assure Me That A Man Who Is Hit Through The Neck And Survives It Is The Luckiest Creature Alive. I Could Not Help Thinking That It Would Be Even Luckier Not To Be Hit At All.

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.

Think Of Something You Really Care About. Then Add Hour To Hour And Calculate The Fraction Of Your Life That You've Actually Spent In Doing It. And Then Calculate The Time You've Spent On Things Like Shaving, Riding To And Fro On Buses, Waiting In Railway Junctions, Swapping Dirty Stories, And Reading The Newspapers.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

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

But The Proles, If Only They Could Somehow Become Conscious Of Their Own Strength, Would Have No Need To Conspire. They Needed Only To Rise Up And Shake Themselves Like A Horse Shaking Off Flies. If They Chose They Could Blow The Party To Pieces Tomorrow Morning. Surely Sooner Or Later It Must Occur To Them To Do It? And Yet --!

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

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. He Is Struggling Against Vagueness, Against Obscurity, Against The Lure Of The Decorative Adjective, Against The Encroachment Of Latin And Greek, And, Above All, Against The Worn-out Phrases And Dead Metaphors With Which The Language Is Cluttered Up.

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.

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

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

The Past Is A Curious Thing. It's With You All The Time. I Suppose An Hour Never Passes Without Your Thinking Of Things That Happened Ten Or Twenty Years Ago, And Yet Most Of The Time It's Got No Reality, It's Just A Set Of Facts That You've Learned, Like A Lot Of Stuff In A History Book. Then Some Chance Sight Or Sound Or Smell, Especially Smell, Sets You Going, And The Past Doesn't Merely Come Back To You, You're Actually In The Past. It Was Like That At This Moment.

The Primary Aim Of Modern Warfare ... Is To Use Up The Products Of The Machine Without Raising The General Standard Of Living.

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.

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

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

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

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

We Believe Half-instinctively That Evil Always Defeats Itself In The Long Run. Pacifism Is Founded Largely On This Belief. Don't Resist Evil, And It Will Somehow Destroy Itself. But Why Should It? What Evidence Is There That It Does... Unless Conquered From The Outside By Military Force?

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.

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.

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

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

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

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

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

He Felt As Though He Were Wandering In The Forests Of The Sea Bottom, Lost In A Monstrous World Where He Himself Was The Monster. He Was Alone. The Past Was Dead, The Future Was Unimaginable

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

Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.

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

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

Political Language

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

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.

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

In This Country, Intellectual Cowardice Is The Worst Enemy A Writer Or Journalist Has To Face ... Unpopular Ideas Can Be Silenced, And Incovenient Facts Kept Dark, Without The Need For Any Official Ban ... At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Iedas Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

To An Ordinary Human Being, Love Means Nothing If It Does Not Mean Loving Some People More Than Others.

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.

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

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

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

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

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