Politics and Power

Can we devise one of those lies—the kind which crop up as the occasion demands, which we were talking about not so long ago—so that with a single noble lie we can indocrinate the rulers themselves, preferably, but at least the rest of the community?

What I say is that ‘just’ or ‘right’ means nothing but what is in the interest of the stronger party.

Every woman adores a Fascist,

No, painting is not made to decorate apartments. It’s an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.

Tyranny is always better organised than freedom.

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

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

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.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.

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

Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.

I brought myself down. I gave them a sword.

I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.

There can be no whitewash at the White House.

Anyone who campaigns for public office becomes disqualified for holding any office at all.

Your sheep, that were wont to be so meek and tame, and so small eaters, now, as I hear say, be become so great devourers, and so wild, that they eat up and swallow down the very men themselves.

Let not England forget her precedence of teaching nations how to live.

What I have spoken, is the language of that which is not called amiss The good old Cause.

New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large.

A State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes, will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

The Conservatives … being by the law of their existence the stupidest party.