The Infinite Library

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

“Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.”

“He said that the education of the young was more important than anything that could be done for those who are already grown up.”

“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.”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.”

“In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of polities'. All issues are political issues.”

“He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.”

“A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.”

“Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.”

“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?”

“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.”

“There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.”

“At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”

“Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

“Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.”

“Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.”

“If you hate violence and don't believe in politics, the only major remedy remaining is education.”

“Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.”

“The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.”

“The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.”

“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?”

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

“Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.”

“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.”

“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”

“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”

“Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

“In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”

“War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”

“Good writing is like a windowpane.”

“Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child's eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.”

“Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.”

“All writers are vain, selfish and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a long, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

“He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.”

“Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.”

“The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent.”

“If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that you are in the right?”

“Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

“There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.”

“Big Brother is watching you.”

“A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does not triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.”