I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, it is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

If you cannot be honest with yourself, there is no hope of being honest with anyone else.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a life.

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.

If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your own integrity. If you need a witness, be your own.

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, butt in favors - When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you - When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - You may know that your society is doomed.

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

Perfect wisdom has four parts; Wisdom, the principle of doing things right. Justice, the principle of doing things equally in public and private. Fortitude, the principle of not fleeing danger, but meeting it. Temperance, the principle of subduing desires and living moderately.

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.

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.

Everything you said should be true but not everything true should be said.

I am a true laborer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear, owe no man hate, envy no man’s happiness, glad of other men’s good, content with my harm.

For truth is precious and divine—too rich a perl for carnal swine.

Realizing the Divine as Truth will save you hours of work in research in any field. You will be led to the right book or the right place or the right person without loss of time, or the necessary information will come to you in some other way.

Nothing can now be believed which is seen in the newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.