Sometimes they threaten you with something - something you can't stand up to, can't even think about. And then you say, Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-so. And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care is yourself.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Winston was gelatinous with fatigue.

If you have no money, men won't care for you, women won't love you; won't, that is, care for you or love you the last little bit that matters.

they had come to a time when no one dared speak his mind, when fierce, growling dogs roamed everywhere, and when you had to watch your comrades torn to pieces after confessing to shocking crimes.

He would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies.

The real test of character is how you treat someone who has no possibility of doing you any good.