Can’t is the worst word that is written or spoken; Doing more harm here than slander and lies; On it is many a strong spirit broken, And with it many a good purpose dies.

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

Every act you have ever performed since the day you were born was performed because you wanted something.

If there is anything in the world a person should fight for, it is freedom to pursue his ideal, because in that is his great opportunity for self-expression, for the unfoldment of the greatest thing possible to him.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.

Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

There is but one thing of real value—to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

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

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.

And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.

The liar is no better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

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.

Let us affirm what seems to be the truth, that, whether one is or is not, one and the others in relation to themselves and one another, all of them, in every way, are and are not, and appear to be and appear not to be.

It wasn't until late in life that I discovered how easy it is to say "I don't know."

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

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.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.