George Orwell

“He was an embittered atheist, the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him.”

“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”

“Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.”

“Good writing is like a windowpane.”

“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”

“It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”

“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.”

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

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

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.”

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”

“Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“Liberal: a power worshipper without power.”

“Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.”

“Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

“As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents.”

“Society has always seemed to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.”

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

“In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

“The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.”

“To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.”