Every war when it comes, 

or before it comes, 

is represented not as a war 

but as an act of self-defence 

against a homicidal maniac.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, 

the police are prowling through the cities, 

the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, 

but the earth is still going round the sun.

But if thought corrupts language, 

language can also corrupt thought.

Each generation imagines itself 

to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, 

and wiser than the one that comes after it.

Good writing is like a windowpane.

Nationalism is power hunger 

tempered by self-deception.

If liberty means anything at all, 

it means the right to tell people 

what they do not want to hear.