Gordon eyed them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place.

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

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The Penguin books are splendid value for sixpence, so splendid that if other publishers had any sense they would combine against them and suppress them.

I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech - the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.

Big Brother is watching you.

Has it ever occurred to you,' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?