When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

When I talk to anyone or read the writings of anyone who has any axe to grind, I feel that intellectual honesty and balanced judgement have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone's thought is forensic, everyone is simply putting a "case" with deliberate suppression of his opponent's point of view, and, what is more, with complete insensitiveness to any sufferings except those of himself and his friends.

It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda tours.

A man receiving charity always hates his benefactor- it is a fixed characteristic of human nature

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.

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.

Man's greatest drive is not love or hate but to change another person's writing.