If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?

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.

It is a mysterious thing, the loss of faith—as mysterious as faith itself.

Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

The most stirring battle-poem in English is about a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction.

Money has become the grand test of virtue. By this test beggars fail, and for this they are despised. If one could earn even ten pounds a week at begging, it would become a respectable profession immediately. A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other businessmen, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modem people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.