And the bigger the fall, the bigger the joke. It would be better fun to throw a custard pie at a bishop than at a curate.

To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.

In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.

Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

[Political] prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.