Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of...
It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.
To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives wo...
Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.
Sharply the menacing wind sweeps overThe bending poplars, newly bare,And the dark ribbons of the chimneysVeer downward; flicked by whips of air.Torn posters flutter; coldly soundThe boom of trams and...
And if our book consumption remains as low as it has been, at least let us admit that it is because reading is a less exciting pastime than going to the dogs, the pictures or the pub, and not because...
Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane.
Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resis...
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
If you have embraced a creed which appears to be free from the ordinary dirtiness of politics - a creed from which you yourself cannot expect to draw any material advantage - surely that proves that y...
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
No doubt alcohol tobacco and so forth are things that a saint must avoid but sainthood is also a thing that human beings must avoid.
No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred.
I know it is the fashion to say that most of recorded history is lies anyway. I am willing to believe that history is for the most part inaccurate and biased, but what is peculiar to our own age is th...
The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms like a cuttl...
In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.
War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.
The point is that you have here a direct, unmistakable assault on sanity and decency; and even - since some of Dali’s pictures would tend to poison the imagination like a pornographic postcard - on li...