In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging, and sheer cloudy vagueness... Political language [is] designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

Perhaps a man really dies when his brain stops, when he loses the power to take in a new idea.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all.

In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

Either we all live in a decent world, or nobody does.