It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.

Language ought to be the joint creation of poets and manual workers.

Political chaos is connected with the decay of language... one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.