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.

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

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

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

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

There are two ways to conquer and enslave a country. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.

This I learned in Auschwitz: There are only two races. The race of the decent and the race of the indecent.

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it. All that is not a true change will disappear in the future society.

Laws are sand, customs are rock. Laws can be evaded and punishment escaped, but an openly transgressed custom brings sure punishment.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Think lovingly, speak lovingly, act lovingly, and every need shall be supplied.

Factual evidence can never “prove” a hypothesis; it can only fail to disprove it, which is what we generally mean when we say, somewhat inexactly, that the hypothesis is “confirmed” by experience.

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

To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason.

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

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

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

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

The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow eating agony of a lie is never lost.

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.