Fate seemed to be playing a series of extraordinarily unamusing jokes.

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.

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.

And it is a great thing to die in your own bed, though it is better still to die in your boots.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution