But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
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.
Despotic governments can stand ‘moral force’ till the cows come home; what they fear is physical force.
No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level.
I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.
The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians.
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.
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.