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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.

-George Orwell

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When I Sit Down

George Orwell

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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.

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The Essence Of Being Human Is That One Does Not Seek Perfection.

Sheer Egoism... Writers Share This Characteristic With Scientists, Artists, Politicians, Lawyers, Soldiers, Successful Businessmen - In Short, With The Whole Top Crust Of Humanity.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Myths Which Are Believed In Tend To Become True.

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

To Talk, Simply To Talk! It Sounds So Little, And How Much It Is! When You Have Existed To The Brink Of Middle Age In Bitter Loneliness, Among People To Whom Your True Opinion On Every Subject On Earth Is Blasphemy, The Need To Talk Is The Greatest Of All Needs.

The Weariness Of The Cell Is The Vigour Of The Organism.

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.

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

To Accept Civilization As It Is Practically Means Accepting Decay.

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!

Lack Of Money Means Discomfort, Means Squalid Worries, Means Shortage Of Tobacco, Means Ever-present Consciousness Of Failure-above All, It Means Loneliness.

The Pleasures Of Spring Are Available To Everybody And Cost Nothing.

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

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me: There Lie They, And Here Lie We Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

He Was An Embittered Atheist, The Sort Of Atheist Who Does Not So Much Disbelieve In God As Personally Dislike Him.

By Revolution We Become More Ourselves, Not Less.

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 Managed To Get My Copy Of Ulysses Through Safely This Time. I Rather Wish I Had Never Read It. It Gives Me An Inferiority Complex. When I Read A Book Like That And Then Come Back To My Own Work, I Feel Like A Eunuch Who Has Taken A Course In Voice Production.

The Quickest Way Of Ending A War Is To Lose It.

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 Is Difficult For A Statesman Who Still Has A Political Future To Reveal Everything That He Knows: And In A Profession In Which One Is A Baby At 50 And Middle-aged At Seventy-five, It Is Natural That Anyone Who Has Not Actually Been Disgraced Should Feel That He Still Has A Future.

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.

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.

Can You Not Understand That Liberty Is Worth More Than Ribbons?

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

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

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

Political Language

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

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

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 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 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.

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

A Peace That Was Truly Permanent Would Be The Same As A Permanent War.

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 Atmosphere Of Orthodoxy Is Always Damaging To Prose, And Above All It Is Completely Ruinous To The Novel, The Most Anarchical Of All Forms Of Literature.

The 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.

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

To Die Hating Them, That Was Freedom.

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

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

Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing.

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

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!

You're Only A Rebel From The Waist Downwards,' He Told Her.

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?

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.

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

[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

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

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

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.

Anyone Who Knows Of A Provable Instance Of Colour Discrimination Ought Always To Expose It.

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

In A Town Like London There Are Always Plenty Of Not Quite Certifiable Lunatics Walking The Streets, And They Tend To Gravitate Towards Bookshops, Because A Bookshop Is One Of The Few Places Where You Can Hang About For A Long Time Without Spending Any Money.

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.

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

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

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

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

Being In A Minority, Even In A Minority Of One, Did Not Make You Mad. There Was Truth And There Was Untruth, And If You Clung To The Truth Even Against The Whole World, You Were Not Mad.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Freedom Of The Press

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

Perhaps A Lunatic Was Simply A Minority Of One.

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

Winston Could Not Definitely Remember A Time When His Country Had Not Been At War...war Had Literally Been Continuous, Though Strictly Speaking It Had Not Always Been The Same War. The Enemy Of The Moment Always Represented Absolute Evil.

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.

In All The Modern Talk About Energy, Efficiency, Social Service And The Rest Of It, What Meaning Is There Except "get Money, Get It Legally, And Get A Lot Of It"? Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue.

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

Each Generation Imagines Itself To Be More Intelligent Than The One That Went Before It, And Wiser Than The One That Comes After It.

We Know That No One Ever Seizes Power With The Intention Of Relinquishing It.

Bombing Is Not Especially Inhumane. War Itself Is Inhumane And The Bombing Plane, Which Is Used To Paralyse Industry And Transport, Is A Relatively Civilised Weapon. 'normal' Or 'legitimate' Warfare Is Just As Destructive Of Inanimate Objects And Enormously So Of Human Lives.

Inanimate Objects

Actions Are Held To Be Good Or Bad, Not On Their Own Merits, But According To Who Does Them. There Is Almost No Kind Of Outrage-torture, Imprisonment Without Trial, Assassination, The Bombing Of Civilians-which Does Not Change Its Moral Color When It Is Committed By 'our' Side. The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Atrocities Committed

What Is Not Hereditary Cannot Be Permanent.

War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.

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

Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing. He Does Not Give Milk, He Does Not Lay Eggs, He Is Too Weak To Pull The Plough, He Cannot Run Fast Enough To Catch Rabbits. Yet He Is Lord Of All The Animals.

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

If Both The Past And The External World Exist Only In The Mind, And If The Mind Itself Is Controllable - What Then?

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.

All Art Is Propaganda.

I Doubt Whether Classical Education Ever Has Been Or Can Be Successfully Carried Out Without Corporal Punishment.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout With Some Painful Illness. One Would Never Undertake Such A Thing If One Were Not Driven On By Some Demon Whom One Can Neither Resist Nor Understand.

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.

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

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.

Whoever Controls The Image And Information Of The Past Determines What And How Future Generations Will Think; Whoever Controls The Information And Images Of The Present Determines How Those Same People Will View The Past." "he Who Controls The Past Commands The Future. He Who Commands The Future Conquers The Past.

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.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

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

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

The Way To Make A Million Dollars Is To Start A Religion.

Million Dollars

Even The Humblest Party Member Is Expected To Be Competent, Industrious, And Even Intelligent Within Narrow Limits, But It Is Also Necessary That He Should Be A Credulous And Ignorant Fanatic Whose Prevailing Moods Are Fear, Hatred, Adulation, And Orgiastic Triumph. In Other Words It Is Necessary That He Should Have The Mentality Appropriate To A State Of War. It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Actually Happening, And, Since No Decisive Victory Is Possible, It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Going Well Or Badly. All That Is Needed Is That A State Of War Should Exist.

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

The Men Who Were Well Enough To Stand Had Moved Across The Carriage To Cheer The Italians As They Went Past. A Crutch Waved Out Of The Window; Bandaged Forearms Made The Red Salute. It Was Like An Allegorical Picture Of War; The Trainload Of Fresh Men Gliding Proudly Up The Line, The Maimed Men Sliding Slowly Down, And All The While The Guns On The Open Trucks Making One's Heart Leap As Guns Always Do, And Reviving That Pernicious Feeling, So Difficult To Get Rid Of, That War *is* Glorious After All.

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

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

The More Intelligent, The Less Sane

Ignorance In 1984

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.

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

Pacifism Is Objectively Pro-fascist

In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.

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

Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered By Self-deception.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

If He Were Allowed Contact With Foreigners He Would Discover That They Are Creatures Similar To Himself And That Most Of What He Has Been Told About Them Is Lies. The Sealed World In Which He Lives Would Be Broken, And The Fear, Hatred And Self-righteousness On Which His Morale Depends Might Evaporate.

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

During Five Literary Generations Every Enlightened Person Had Despised Him, And At The End Of That Time Nine-tenths Of Those Enlightened Persons Are Forgotten And Kipling Is In Some Sense Still There.

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.

Pessimism Is Reactionary Because It Makes The Very Idea Of Improving The World Impossible.

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

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

If He Thinks He Floats Off The Floor, And If I Simultaneously Think I See Him Do It, Then The Thing Happens.

Totalitarianism, If Not Fought Against, Could Triumph Anywhere.

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

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.

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

There Is Only One Way To Make Money At Writing, And That Is To Marry A Publisher's Daughter.

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

Mysterious Things

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.

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

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

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

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

Literature Is Doomed If Liberty Of Thought Perishes.

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

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

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!

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.

For The Future. For The Unborn.

Despotic Governments Can Stand 'moral Force' Till The Cows Come Home; What They Fear Is Physical Force.

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.

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

The Mute Protest In Your Own Bones

The English Are Not Happy Unless They Are Miserable, The Irish Are Not At Peace Unless They Are At War, And The Scots Are Not At Home Unless They Are Abroad.

We Are The Dead. Our Only True Life Is In The Future. We Shall Take Part In It As Handfuls Of Dust And Splinters Of Bone. But How Far Away That Future May Be, There Is No Knowing.

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!

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.

Weakness Is Strength.

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 Process [of Mass-media Deception] Has To Be Conscious, Or It Would Not Be Carried Out With Sufficient Precision, But It Also Has To Be Unconscious, Or It Would Bring With It A Feeling Of Falsity And Hence Of Guilt.... To Tell Deliberate Lies While Genuinely Believing In Them, To Forget Any Fact That Has Become Inconvenient, And Then, When It Becomes Necessary Again, To Draw It Back From Oblivion For Just So Long As It Is Needed, To Deny The Existence Of Objective Reality And All The While To Take Account Of The Reality Which One Denies All This Is Indispensably Necessary.

The 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.

He [gandhi] Was Not One Of Those Saints Who Are Marked Out By Their Phenomenal Piety From Childhood Onwards, Nor One Of The Other Kind Who Forsake The World After Sensational Debaucheries.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

We Are In A Strange Period Of History In Which A Revolutionary Has To Be A Patriot And A Patriot Has To Be A Revolutionary.

[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.

Beauty Is Meaningless Until It Is Shared.

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.

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

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

Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.

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 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.

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.

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

Most People Who Bother With The Matter At All Would Admit That The English Language Is In A Bad Way, But It Is Generally Assumed That We Cannot By Conscious Action Do Anything About It.

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.

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.

To The Future Or To The Past, To A Time When Thought Is Free, When Men Are Different From One Another And Do Not Live Alone— To A Time When Truth Exists And What Is Done Cannot Be Undone: From The Age Of Uniformity, From The Age Of Solitude, From The Age Of Big Brother, From The Age Of Doublethink — Greetings!

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

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

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?

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

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.

Writing A Novel Is Agony.

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

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

Surely, Comrades, You Don't Want Jones Back?

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 There Is Hope, It Lies In The Proles.

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

Thoughtcrime Was Not A Thing That Could Be Concealed Forever. You Might Dodge Successfully For A While, Even For Years, But Sooner Or Later They Were Bound To Get You.

Winston Worked In The Records Department (a Single Branch Of The Ministry Of Truth) Editing And Writing For The Times. He Dictated Into A Machine Called A Speakwrite. Winston Would Receive Articles Or News-items Which For One Reason Or Another It Was Thought Necessary To Alter, Or, In Newspeak, Rectify. If, For Example, The Ministry Of Plenty Forecast A Surplus, And In Reality The Result Was Grossly Less, Winston's Job Was To Change Previous Versions So The Old Version Would Agree With The New One.

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