Truth

Above all things truth beareth away the victory.

A measure of such things which in any degree falls short of the whole truth is not fair measure; for nothing imperfect is the measure of anything, although persons are too apt to be contented and think that they need search no further.

A principle which has any soundness should stand firm not only just now, but always.

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

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be REDUCED to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

The threat to men of great dignity, privilege and pretense is not from the radicals they revile; it is from accepting their own myth. Exposure to reality remains the nemesis of the great—a little understood thing.

And if, to be sure, sometimes you need to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defence.

Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician’s objective. Election and power are.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

Manipulations of opinion, insofar as they are inspired by well-defined interests, have limited goals; their effect, however, if they happen to touch upon an issue of authentic concern, is no longer subject to their control and may easily produce consequences they never foresaw or intended.

One may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

Every communist has a fascist frown, every fascist a communist smile.

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please—you can never have both.

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth, to see it like it is and to tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth and live with the truth. That’s what we’ll do.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

The ability to discriminate between that which is true and that which is false is one of the last attainments of the human mind.

The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.