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

The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.

Creeds like pacifism or anarchism, which seem on the surface to imply a complete renunciation of power, rather encourage this habit of mind. For if you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics ... the more you are in the right (and) everybody else should be bullied into thinking otherwise.

If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten them.

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that evey sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.

He loved Big Brother.

If I had understood the situation a bit better I should probably have joined the Anarchists.