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.
The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.
I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.
Dickens is one of those authors who are well worth stealing.
Pacifism is objectively pro-Fascist.
Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.
Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.
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 Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.
I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and the people can be trusted to behave decently if you will only let them alone.
Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.
It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
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 was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.
A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.
All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.
The people will believe what the media tells them they believe.
He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.
As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.