Morality is truth in full bloom.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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

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.”

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

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

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

But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.

False leaders create followers by lying.

The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

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