The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right.

I doubt whether classical education ever has been or can be successfully carried out without corporal punishment.

As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.

The child thinks of growing old as an almost obscene calamity, which for some mysterious reason will never happen to itself. All who have passed the age of thirty are joyless grotesques, endlessly fussing about things of no importance and staying alive without, so far as the child can see, having anything to live for. Only child life is real life.

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

I'm fat, but I'm thin inside... there's a thin man inside every fat man.

If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out