As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool - and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler.

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

Progress and reaction have both turned out to be swindles. Seemingly, there is nothing left but quietism - robbing reality of its terrors by simply submitting to it.

Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.

War is a way of shattering to pieces... materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and... too intelligent.

...men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less civilized, are there to guard and feed them.

The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.