Sheer egoism... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.

If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.

In the end I worked out an anarchistic theory that all government is evil, that the punishment always does more harm than the crime and that people can be trusted to behave decently if only you will let them alone.

The pleasures of spring are available to everybody and cost nothing.

Those who 'abjure' violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.

In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science.' The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc.

To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.