The choice before human beings, is not, as a rule, between good and evil but between two evils.

Joyce is a poet and also an elephantine pedant.

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

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.

In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.