Quote collection
767 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"All nationalistic distinctions - all claims to be better than somebody else because you have a different-shaped skull or speak a different dialect - are entirely spurious, but they are important so long as people believe in them."
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."
"He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage."
"So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance. Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult."
"The prime necessities for success in life are money, athleticism, tailor made clothes and a charming smile."
"Man's greatest drive is not love or hate but to change another person's writing."
"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."
"No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE."
"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!"
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization."
"it was only a hopeless fantasy, it passed like an april day, but a look and a word and the dreams they stirred they have stolen my heart away."
"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."
"It is not possible for any thinking person to live in such a society as our own without wanting to change it."
"We have sunk so low it has become the obligation of every decent, thinking individual to re-state the obvious!"
"The object of power is power."
"Take away freedom of speech, and the creative faculties dry up."