Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.
Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering and only the very sound or the very foolish imagine otherwise.
Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.
In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of polities'. All issues are political issues.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.
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.
At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.
