Patriotism is usually stronger than class-hatred, and always stronger than any kind of internationalism.
Part of the reason for the ugliness of adults, in a child’s eyes, is that the child is usually looking upwards, and few faces are at their best when seen from below.
Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
One’s got to change the system, or one changes nothing.
One of the most horrible features of war is that all the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.
One can love a child, perhaps, more deeply than one can love another adult, but it is rash to assume that the child feels any love in return.
On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.
Nothing in the world is quite so irritating as dealing with mutinous children.
Not to expose your true feelings to an adult seems to be instinctive from the age of seven or eight onwards.
No one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
No book is genuinely free from political bias.
No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets.
