A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance, this new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.

A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war.

Mrs Weaver nosed among the books, too dim-witted to grasp that they were in alphabetical order.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

To write or even speak English is not a science but an art. There are no reliable words. Whoever writes English is involved in a struggle that never lets up even for a sentence. He is struggling against vagueness, against obscurity, against the lure of the decorative adjective, against the encroachment of Latin and Greek, and, above all, against the worn-out phrases and dead metaphors with which the language is cluttered up.

The modern writer who has influenced me most is W. Somerset Maugham .

Perhaps it is only when people are somewhere near the starvation level that they have anything to sing about.