We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W.H. Auden, a sort of gutless Kipling.

The more men you've had, the more I love you.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

When you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being and not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don't mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met and spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to feel any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel I ought to - like the Labour M.P.s who get patted on the back by dukes and are lost forever more.

All men are enemies. All animals are comrades

Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.