But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

Snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

Most revolutionaries are potential Tories, because they imagine that everything can be put right by altering the shape of society; once that change is effected, as it sometimes is, they see no need for any other.

He drove his mind into the abyss where poetry is written.