The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.