Tea is one of the main stays of civilization in this country.

We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.

Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them. There is almost no kind of outrage-torture, imprisonment without trial, assassination, the bombing of civilians-which does not change its moral color when it is committed by 'our' side. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

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.

It was soon noticed that when ever there was work to be done the cat could never be found.

There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.

A dirty joke is not, of course, a serious attack on morality, but it is a sort of mental rebellion, a momentary wish that things were otherwise.