The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.
Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed. Everything else is public relations.
Sanity is not statistical.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.
It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs – and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?
You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,? he told her.
The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink.
The Seven Commandments: Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. No animal shall wear clothes. No animal shall sleep in a bed. No animal shall drink alcohol. No animal shall kill any other animal. All animals are equal.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ’controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
Until they become conscious, they will never rebel.
If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, “I’m a free man in here” – he tapped his forehead – “and you’re all right.
Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.
War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comforable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.