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To Know And Not To Know, To Be Conscious Of Complete Truthfulness While Telling Carefully Constructed Lies, To Hold Simultaneously Two Opinions Which Cancelled Out, Knowing Them To Be Contradictory And Believing In Both Of Them, To Use Logic Against Logic, To Repudiate Morality While Laying Claim To It, To Believe That Democracy Was Impossible And That The Party Was The Guardian Of Democracy.

-George Orwell

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To Know And Not

George Orwell

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To Know And Not To Know, To Be Conscious Of Complete Truthfulness While Telling Carefully Constructed Lies, To Hold Simultaneously Two Opinions Which Cancelled Out, Knowing Them To Be Contradictory And Believing In Both Of Them, To Use Logic Against Logic, To Repudiate Morality While Laying Claim To It, To Believe That Democracy Was Impossible And That The Party Was The Guardian Of Democracy.

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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 Had Become Usual To Give Napoleon The Credit For Every Successful Achievement And Every Stroke Of Good Fortune. You Would Often Hear One Hen Remark To Another, "under The Guidance Of Our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I Have Laid Five Eggs In Six Days" Or Two Cows, Enjoying A Drink At The Pool, Would Exclaim, "thanks To The Leadership Of Comrade Napoleon, How Excellent This Water Tastes!".

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

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.

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.

Real Power Is Achieved When The Ruling Class Controls The Material Essentials Of Life, Granting And Withholding Them From The Masses As If They Were Privileges.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

In A Society In Which There Is No Law, And In Theory No Compulsion, The Only Arbiter Of Behaviour Is Public Opinion. But Public Opinion, Because Of The Tremendous Urge To Conformity In Gregarious Animals, Is Less Tolerant Than Any System Of Law. When Human Beings Are Governed By "thou Shalt Not", The Individual Can Practise A Certain Amount Of Eccentricity: When They Are Supposedly Governed By "love" Or "reason", He Is Under Continuous Pressure To Make Him Behave And Think In Exactly The Same Way As Everyone Else.

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!

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

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.

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

Democratic Socialism

There Is No Such Thing As A Naval Dictatorship.

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

Writing A Novel Is Agony.

...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.

The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection, That One Is Sometimes Willing To Commit Sins For The Sake Of Loyalty, That One Does Not Push Asceticism To The Point Where It Makes Friendly Intercourse Impossible, And That One Is Prepared In The End To Be Defeated And Broken Up By Life, Which Is The Inevitable Price Of Fastening One's Love Upon Other Human Individuals.

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

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

You Were The Dead; Theirs Was The Future.

The Clock Struck Half Past Two. In The Little Office At The Back Of Mr. Mckechnie's Bookshop, Gordon--gordon Comstock, Last Member Of The Comstock Family, Aged Twenty-nine And Rather Moth-eaten Already--lounged Across The Table, Pushing A Fourpenny Packet Of Player's Weights Open And Shut With His Thumb.

In 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.

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

The 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.

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

How Could You Communicate With The Future? It Was Impossible. Either The Future Would Resemble The Present In Which Case It Would Not Listen To Him, Or It Would Be Different From It, And His Predicament Would Be Meaningless.

Truth Becomes Untruth If Uttered By Your Enemy

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.

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

All Art Is Propaganda.

The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous.

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

I Always Disagree, However, When People End Up Saying That We Can Only Combat Communism, Fascism Or What Not If We Develop An Equal Fanaticism. It Appears To Me That One Defeats The Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.

It Struck Him That The Truly Characteristic Thing About Modern Life Was Not Its Cruelty And Insecurity, But Simply Its Bareness, Its Dinginess, Its Listlessness. Life, If You Looked About You, Bore No Resemblance Not Only To The Lies That Streamed Out Of The Telescreens, But Even To The Ideals That The Party Was Trying To Achieve.

England Will Still Be England, An Everlasting Animal, Stretching Into The Future And The Past And Like All Living Things Having The Power To Change Out Of All Recognition And Yet Remain The Same.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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

Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Ordinary Human Feeling. Everything Will Be Dead Inside You. Never Again Will You Be Capable Of Love, Or Friendship, Or Joy Of Living, Or Laughter, Or Curiosity, Or Courage, Or Integrity. You Will Be Hollow. We Shall Squeeze You Empty And Then We Shall Fill You With Ourselves.

What Can The England Of 1940 Have In Common With The England Of 1840? But Then, What Have You In Common With The Child Of Five Whose Photograph Your Mother Keeps On The Mantelpiece? Nothing, Except That You Happen To Be The Same Person.

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?

All Men Are Enemies. All Animals Are Comrades

One Defeats A Fanatic Precisely By Not Being A Fanatic Oneself, But On The Contrary By Using One's Intelligence.

But The Problems Of Perpetuating A Hierarchical Society Go Deeper Than This. There Are Only Four Ways In Which A Ruling Group Can Fall From Power. Either It Is Conquered From Without, Or It Governs So Inefficiently That The Masses Are Stirred To Revolt, Or It Allows A Strong And Discontented Middle Group To Come Into Being, Or It Loses Its Own Self-confidence And Willingness To Govern.

Self Confidence

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.

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?

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

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

The Aim Of A Joke Is Not To Degrade The Human Being, But To Remind Him That He Is Already Degraded.

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

Liberal: A Power Worshipper Without Power.

[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.

It Was Curious To Think That The Sky Was The Same For Everybody, In Eurasia Or Eastasia As Well As Here. And The People Under The Sky Were Also Very Much The Same--everywhere, All Over The World, Hundreds Or Thousands Of Millions Of People Just Like This, People Ignorant Of One Another's Existence, Held Apart By Walls Of Hatred And Lies, And Yet Almost Exactly The Same--people Who Had Never Learned To Think But Were Storing Up In Their Hearts And Bellies And Muscles The Power That Would One Day Overturn The World.

It Is Curious How People Take It For Granted That They Have A Right To Preach At You And Pray Over You As Soon As Your Income Falls Below A Certain Level.

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

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

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

It's Frightful That People Who Are So Ignorant Should Have So Much Influence.

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.

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.

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

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

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.

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.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

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.

Big Brother Is Watching You.

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

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

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

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

Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A Dirty Joke Is A Sort Of Mental Rebellion.

After 40, A Man Is Responsible For His Face.

If There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

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.

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

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

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

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

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.

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."

The Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.

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.

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.

Freedom Is The Right To Tell Others What They Don't Want To Hear.

Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else.

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

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

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

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

Lastly, Tea--unless One Is Drinking It In The Russian Style--should Be Drunk Without Sugar. I Know Very Well That I Am In A Minority Here. But Still, How Can You Call Yourself A True Tea-lover If You Destroy The Flavour Of Your Tea By Putting Sugar In It? It Would Be Equally Reasonable To Put In Pepper Or Salt. Tea Is Meant To Be Bitter, Just As Beer Is Meant To Be Bitter. If You Sweeten It, You Are No Longer Tasting The Tea, You Are Merely Tasting The Sugar; You Could Make A Very Similar Drink By Dissolving Sugar In Plain Hot Water.

The Consequences Of Every Act Are Included In The Act Itself.

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

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

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.

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.

What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

Serious Sport Has Nothing To Do With Fair Play. It Is Bound Up With Hatred, Jealousy, Boastfulness, Disregard Of All Rules And Sadistic Pleasure In Witnessing Violence. In Other Words, It Is War Minus The Shooting.

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.

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

Progress Is Not An Illusion, It Happens, But It Is Slow And Invariably Disappointing.

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

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?

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

Freedom Of The Press

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.

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

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

The Further A Society Drifts From Truth The More It Will Hate Those Who Speak It.

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

The Mutability Of The Past Is The Central Tenet Of Ingsoc. Past Events, It Is Argued, Have No Objective Existance, But Survive Only In Written Records And In Human Memories. The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon. And Since The Party Is In Full Control Of All Records, And In Equally Full Control Of The Minds Of Its Members, It Follows That The Past Is Whatever The Party Chooses To Make It.

Fate Seemed To Be Playing A Series Of Extraordinarily Unamusing Jokes.

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

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

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

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

Don't You See That The Whole Aim Of Newspeak Is To Narrow The Range Of Thought? Has It Ever Occurred To You, Winston, That By The Year 2050, At The Very Latest, Not A Single Human Being Will Be Alive Who Could Understand Such A Conversation As We Are Having Now?

In Oceania At The Present Day, Science, In The Old Sense, Has Almost Ceased To Exist. In Newspeak There Is No Word For 'science.' The Empirical Method Of Thought, On Which All The Scientific Achievements Of The Past Were Founded, Is Opposed To The Most Fundamental Principles Of Ingsoc.

The Most Effective Way To Destroy People Is To Deny And Obliterate Their Own Understanding Of Their History.

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

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.

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.

A Thing Which I Regret, And Which I Will Try To Remedy Some Time, Is That I Have Never In My Life Planted A Walnut. Nobody Does Plant Them Nowadays-when You See A Walnut It Is Almost Invariably An Old Tree. If You Plant A Walnut You Are Planting It For Your Grandchildren, And Who Cares A Damn For His Grandchildren?

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

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

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

I Am Afraid Of Death. You Are Young, So Presumably You're More Afraid Of It Than I Am. Obviously We Shall Put If Off As Long As We Can. But It Makes Very Little Difference. So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

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

The Puritanical Nonsense Of Excluding Children And Therefore To Some Extent Women From Pubs Has Turned These Places Into Mere Boozing Shops Instead Of The Family Gathering Places That They Ought To Be.

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

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

Power-worship Blurs Political Judgment Because It Leads, Almost Unavoidably, To The Belief That Present Trends Will Continue. Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

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.

Gordon Eyed Them With Inert Hatred. At This Moment He Hated All Books, And Novels Most Of All. Horrible To Think Of All That Soggy, Half-baked Trash Massed Together In One Place.

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.

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.

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.

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

[you Write Out Of The] Desire To Seem Clever, To Be Talked About, To Be Remembered After Death, Etc., Etc., Etc. It Is Humbug To Pretend This Is Not A Motive And A Strong One.

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.

From A Very Early Age, Perhaps The Age Of Five Or Six, I Knew That When I Grew Up I Should Be A Writer. Between The Ages Of About Seventeen And Twenty-four I Tried To Abandon This Idea, But I Did So With The Consciousness That I Was Outraging My True Nature And That Sooner Or Later I Should Have To Settle Down And Write Books.

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

The Organizing Principal For Any Culture Is War.

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.

The War Is Not Meant To Be Won, It Is Meant To Be Continuous.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

There Was Of Course No Way Of Knowing Whether You Were Being Watched At Any Given Moment. How Often, Or On What System, The Thought Police Plugged In On Any Individual Wire Was Guesswork. It Was Even Conceivable That They Watched Everybody All The Time. But At Any Rate They Could Plug In Your Wire Whenever They Wanted To. You Had To Live-did Live, From Habit That Became Instinct-in The Assumption That Every Sound You Made Was Overheard, And, Except In Darkness, Every Movement Scrutinized.

Politics Is The Choice Between The Lesser Of Two Evils.

The Choice For Mankind Lies Between Freedom And Happiness And For The Great Bulk Of Mankind, Happiness Is Better.

Freedom And Happiness

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

Political Language

True Freedom Is The Right To Say Something That Others Don't Want To Hear.

By Revolution We Become More Ourselves, Not Less.

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.

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

Political Language

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.

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.

Good Writing Is Like A Windowpane.

Donkeys Live A Long Time. None Of You Has Ever Seen A Dead Donkey.

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

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.

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

He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

He Had Moved From Thought To Words, And Now From Words To Actions.

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.

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.

[what Hayek] Does Not See, Or Will Not Admit, [is] That A Return To "free" Competition Means For The Great Mass Of People A Tyranny Probably Worse, Because More Irresponsible, Than That Of The State. The Trouble With Competitions Is That Somebody Wins Them. Professor Hayek Denies That Free Capitalism Necessarily Leads To Monopoly, But In Practice That Is Where It Has Led, And Since The Vast Majority Of People Would Far Rather Have State Regimentation Than Slumps And Unemployment, The Drift Towards Collectivism Is Bound To Continue If Popular Opinion Has Any Say In The Matter.

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.

One Cannot Really Be A Catholic And Grown Up.

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

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