We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.
The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This life we live nowadays. It's not life, it's stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside them. Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.
If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.
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.
The heresy of heresies was common sense.
The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.
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.
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
No advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer.
The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .
He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
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.
Happiness can exist only in acceptance.
When I see an actual flesh-and-blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to ask myself which side I am on.
We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull.
If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.
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.
Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
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.
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