The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.

Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges.

The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

A dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.