Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?

No one can look back on his schooldays and say with truth that they were altogether unhappy.

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.

Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.

And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because books, whether bought or borrowed, are too expensive.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day be day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except the endless present in which the party is always right.