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

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.

This life we live nowadays. It's not life, it's stagnation death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses and the meaningless people inside them. Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.

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

On a ruinous wall I came upon a poster dating from the previous year and announcing that ‘six handsome bulls’ would be killed in the arena on such and such a date. How forlorn its faded colours looked. Where were the handsome bulls and the handsome bull-fighters now? It appeared that even in Barcelona there were hardly any bullfights nowadays - for some reason all the best matadors were Fascists.

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