There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

History has to move in a certain direction, even if it has to be pushed that way by neurotics.

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist. This is elementary common sense. If you hamper the war effort of one side, you automatically help out that of the other. Nor is there any real way of remaining outside such a war as the present one. In practice, 'he that is not with me is against me'.

They were governed by private loyalties which they did not question. What mattered were individual relationships, and a completely helpless gesture, an embrace, a tear, a word spoken to a dying man, could have value in itself