"war is peace. freedom is slavery. ignorance is strength."

"power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."

"reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else."

"if you want to keep a secret, you must always hide it from yourself."

"in general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane."

"has it ever struck you that there's a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there's a statue inside every block of stone?"

"people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

"both men were the spiritual children of Voltaire, both had an ironical, sceptical view of life, and a native pessimism overlaid by gaiety; both knew that the existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions."

"so long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style , to love the surface of the Earth, and to take pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information."