To turn his head and look at her would have been inconceivable folly. With hands locked together, invisible among the press of bodies, they stared steadily in front of them, and instead of the eyes of the girl, the eyes of the aged prisoner gazed mournfully at Winston out of nests of hair.
Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better! Four legs good, two legs better!” It went on for five minutes without stopping. And by the time the sheep had quieted down, the chance to utter any protest had passed, for the pigs had marched back into the farmhouse.
Then we have won back what we had before,′ said Boxer. ‘That is our victory,’ said Squealer.
The average man is not directly interested in politics, and when he reads he wants the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals.
The enemies of intellectual liberty always try to present their case as a plea for discipline versus individualism.
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. With the worthless parasitical human beings gone, there was more for everyone to eat. There was more leisure too, inexperienced though the animals were.
The real working class, though they hate war and are immune to jingoism, are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.
All animals are equal.
If you want to know who rules over you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.
If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.
No animal in England knows the meaning of happiness or leisure after he is a year old. No animal in England is free. The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.
We are born, we are given just so much food as will keep the breath in our bodies, and those of us who are capable of it are forced to work to the last atom of our strength; and the very instant that our usefulness has come to an end we are slaughtered with hideous cruelty.
The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction.
Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life – the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like.
Until one has some kind of professional relationship with books one does not discover how bad the majority of them are. In much more than nine cases out of ten the only objectively truthful criticism would be “This book is worthless”, while the truth about the reviewer’s own reaction would probably be “This book does not interest me in any way, and I would not write about it unless I were paid to.
The English will never develop into a nation of philosophers. They will always prefer instinct to logic and character to intelligence. But they must get rid of their downright contempt for ‘cleverness’. They cannot afford it any longer. They must grow less tolerant of ugliness, and mentally more adventurous. And they must stop despising foreigners. They are Europeans and ought to be aware of it.
Throughout the spring and summer they worked a sixty-hour week, and in August Napoleon announced that there would be work on Sunday afternoons as well. This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.
He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.
All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes – a fact which is recognized in the extra ration issued to old-age pensioners.
If you tell me I am a scoundrel I may mend my ways, but if you tell me I am a eunuch you are tempting me to hit back in any way that seems feasible. If you want to make an enemy of a man, tell him that his ills are incurable.