Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

When I joined the militia I had promised myself to kill one Fascist - after all, if each of us killed one they would soon be extinct.

Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself-anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face ... was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime.

[Political] prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible.

Most people approve of capital punishment, but most people wouldn't do the hangman's job.