Now he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.

In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

The only thing for which we can combine is the underlying ideal of Socialism; justice and liberty. But it is hardly strong enough to call this ideal underlying. It is almost completely forgotten. It has been buried beneath layer after layer of doctnaire priggishness, party squabbles and half-backed progressivism until it is like a diamond hidden under a monition of dung. The job of the Socialist is to get it out again. Justice and liberty! Those are the words that have got to ring like a bugle across the world.

The common people, on the whole, are still living in the world of absolute good and evil from which the intellectuals have long since escaped.

. . . it is a corrupting thing to live one's real life in secret. One should live with the stream of life, not against it.

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.