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

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 inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Either you will control your government, or government will control you.

He who has overcome his fears will truly be free.

The necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance.

If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to allow his vision wherever it takes him.

I rebel; therefore I exist.

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

Never cross a man, not afraid to die.

When even one American, who has done nothing wrong, is forced by fear to shut his mind and close his mouth, then all Americans are in peril.

Men who reject the responsibility of thought and reason can only exist as parasites on the thinking of others.

I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.

You don't have to be big or well known to be great.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism… The one absolutely certain way of brining this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.

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

Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within solitude of his own heart.

My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside all rules and demands of society.

Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it and invent ridiculous embellishments.

To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or simulate it where it does not.

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.

Freedom of information is a fundamental human right...for a nation that is afraid to let its people to judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.