One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas of which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is 'not done' to say it... Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the high-brow periodicals.

It reminded us that propaganda in some form or other lurks in every book, that every work of art has a meaning and a purpose - a political, social and religious purpose - that our aesthetic judgements are always coloured by our prejudices and beliefs

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulne­ss while telling carefully constructe­d lies, to hold simultaneo­usly two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradict­ory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy.

Every life viewed from the inside is a series of defeats.

All men are enemies. All animals are comrades

But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.