"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."
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity."
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and ac- cepting both of them."
"Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
"Being in a minority, even 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. ‘Sanity is not statistical.’"
"Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent that the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it."
"Reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else."
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
"Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time."
"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."
"An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. 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."
"Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility."
"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."
"What does it matter to be laughed at? The big public, in any case, usually doesn't see the joke, and if you state your principles clearly and stick to them, it's wonderful how people come around to you in the end."
"An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. 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."
"The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection."
"Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing."
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others."
"An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. 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."
"Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and ac- cepting both of them."
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."