George Orwell

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

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.

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

To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.

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

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.

At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.

This work was strictly voluntary, but any animal who absented himself from it would have his rations reduced by half.

Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.

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