Quotes

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

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” 

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” 

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” 

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”  

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” 

My specialty is being right when other people are wrong.

A love affair should always be a honeymoon. And the only way to make sure of that is to keep changing the man; for the same man can never keep it up.

Chess ... a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of it.

The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong the moment your conscious self meddles with it.

Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation with the maximum of opportunity.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.

Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.