The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.
If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.
All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed they must rely exclusively on force.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.
In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four.
In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer...
Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.
Bad writers are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones.
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.
It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.
This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.
Four legs good, two legs bad.
Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.
At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.
No animal shall kill any other animal WITHOUT CAUSE.
The object of power is power.
The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.