It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.

If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?

Nearly all creators of Utopia have resembled the man who has toothache, and therefore thinks happiness consists in not having toothache. They wanted to produce a perfect society by an endless continuation of something that had only been valuable because it was temporary. The wider course would be to say that there are certain lines along which humanity must move, the grand strategy is mapped out, but detailed prophecy is not our business. Whoever tries to imagine perfection simply reveals his own emptiness.

I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.