"I have since often observed, how incongruous and irrational the common temper of mankind is, especially of youth, to that reason which ought to guide them in such cases - viz. they are not ashamed to sin, and yet are ashamed to repent. Not ashamed of the action for which they ought justly to be esteemed fools, but are ashamed of the returning, which can only make them be esteemed wise men."

"Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself."

"And of all plagues with which mankind are cursed, Ecclesiastic tyranny's the worst."

"Wealth, howsoever got, in England makes Lords of mechanics, gentlemen of rakes; Antiquity and birth are needless here; 'Tis impudence and money makes a peer."

"Great families of yesterday we show, And lords whose parents were the Lord knows who."

"That heterogeneous thing, an Englishman."

"In their religion they are so uneven, That each man goes his own byway to heaven."

"Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there; And 'twill be found, upon examination, The latter has the largest congregation."

"From this amphibious ill-born mob began That vain, ill-natured thing, an Englishman."

"No panegyric needs their praise record; An Englishman ne'er wants his own good word."

"The royal refugee our breed restores With foreign courtiers and with foreign whores, And carefully repeopled us again, Throughout his lazy, long, lascivious reign."

"The art of war, which I take to be the highest perfection of human knowledge."

"Self-destruction is the effect of cowardice in the highest extreme."

"Let us see in a few Words what Nature and Providence has done for us; nay, what they have done for us exclusive of the rest of the World. The Bounty of Heaven has stor'd us with the Principles of Commerce, fruitful of a vast variety of Things essential to Trade, and which call upon us as it were in the Voice of Nature, bidding us work, and with annex'd Encouragement to do so from the visible apparent Success of Industry. Here the Voice of the World, is plain, like the Answer of an Oracle, thus Dig and Find, Plow and Reap, Fish and Take, Spin and Live; in a word, Trade and Thrive; and this with such extraordinary Circumstances, that it is as if there was a Bar upon the neighbouring Nations, and it had been spoken from Heaven thus: These are for you only, and not for any other Nation; you, my Favourites, of England; you singled out to be great, opulent, powerful, above all your Neighbours, and to be made so by your own Industry and my Bounty."

"Women, in my observation, have little or no difference in them, but as they are or are not distinguished by education."

"The grand contention's plainly to be seen, To get some men put out, and some put in."

"Restraint from ill is freedom to the wise; But Englishmen do all restraint despise."

"To know Trade then is to know the World: And I may farther observe, That if any one Nation could govern Trade, that Nation would govern the World; could it give Laws to the Commerce, it would give Laws to the People, and the whole World would be its Dependents and Subjects."

"It is never too late to be wise."

"Nature has left this tincture in the blood, That all men would be tyrants if they could."

"Above all, I have followed that sure Rule in our Tongue, and which, were it observed, would, I believe, be acknowledged to be the best Rule in all Tongues, (viz) to make the Language plain, artless, and honest, suitable to the Story, and in a Stile easie and free, with as few exotick Phrases and obsolete Words as possible, that the meanest Reader may meet with no Difficulty in the Reading, and may have no Obstruction to his searching the History of things by their being obscurely represented."

"Wise men affirm it is the English way Never to grumble till they come to pay."

"In trouble to be troubled Is to have your trouble doubled."

"The best of men cannot suspend their fate: The good die early, and the bad die late."

"'Tis very strange Men should be so fond of being thought wickeder than they are."

"A true-bred merchant is the best gentleman in the nation."

"It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions."

"Hail, hieroglyphic State machine, Contrived to punish fancy in; Men that are men in thee can feel no pain, And all thy insignificance disdain!"

"Next, bring some lawyers to thy bar, By innuendo they might all stand there; There let them expiate that guilt, And pay for all that blood their tongues have spilt. These are the mountebanks of state, Who by the sleight of tongues can crimes create, And dress up trifles in the robes of fate, The mastiffs of a Government, To worry and run down the innocent."

"Alas the Church of England! What with Popery on one hand, and schismatics on the other, how has she been crucified between two thieves!"

"Reason, it is true, is DICTATOR in the Society of Mankind; from her there ought to lie no Appeal; But here we want a Pope in our Philosophy, to be the infallible Judge of what is or is not Reason."

"All men would be tyrants if they could."

"Like Eden Fruitful, like Arabia Gay, So blest, they scarcely know for what to pray; England in native Glory ever springs; A Country fitted for the View of Kings."

"We loved the doctrine for the teacher's sake."

"How frequently, in the course of our lives, the evil which in itself we seek most to shun, and which, when we are fallen into, is the most dreadful to us, is oftentimes the very means or door of our deliverance, by which alone we can be raised again from the affliction we are fallen into."

"I cannot believe that God ever design'd the Riches of the World to be useless to the World; that the Gold, the Silver, the Diamonds, and other Species of such Immense Worth and Value, was ever created in the Bowels of the Mountains, and the most hidden Parts of the World to lye buried there, and remain unprofitable, till they come to be melted down again in the General Conflagration."

"Sometimes she thought Alec was right—you believed in things because you needed to; what you believed in had no value of its own, no function."

"The English! The rich have eaten your future and your poor have given them the food—that’s what’s happened to the English."

"I am afraid that as a nation we tend to over-organise. Abroad that passes for efficiency."

"“And this is a prison for spies?” Liz persisted. “It is a prison for those who fail to recognize Socialist reality; for those who think they have the right to err; for those who slow down the march. Traitors,” she concluded briefly. “But what have they done?” “We cannot build communism without doing away with individualism. You cannot plan a great building if some swine builds his sty on your site.”"

"If they do not know what they want, how can they be so certain they are right?"

"“It is not fashionable to quote Stalin but he said once, ‘half a million liquidated is a statistic, but one man killed in a traffic accident is a national tragedy.’ He was laughing, you see, at the bourgeois sensitivities of the mass. He was a cynic. But what he meant is still true: a movement which protects itself against counter-revolution can hardly stop at the exploitation—or the elimination, Leamas—of a few individuals. It is all one, we have never pretended to be wholly just in the process of rationalising society. Some Roman said it, didn’t he, in the Christian Bible—it is expedient that one man should die for the benefit of many.” “I expect so,” Leamas replied wearily. “Then what do you think? What is your philosophy?” “I just think the whole lot of you are bastards,” said Leamas savagely."

"“Then the people in this prison are intellectuals?” The woman smiled. “Yes,” she said, “they are reactionaries who call themselves progressive: they defend the individual against the state. Do you know what Khrushchev said about the counter-revolution in Hungary?” Liz shook her head. She must show interest, she must make the woman talk. “He said it would never have happened if a couple of writers had been shot in time.”"

"A man who lives apart, not to others but alone, is exposed to obvious psychological dangers. In itself, the practice of deception is not particularly exacting; it is a matter of experience, of professional expertise, it is a facility most of us can acquire."

"I would say that since the war, our methods—ours and those of the opposition—have become much the same. I mean you can’t be less ruthless than the opposition simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you now?"

"“Alec, what do you believe in? Don’t laugh—tell me.” She waited and at last he said: “I believe an eleven bus will take me to Hammersmith. I don’t believe it’s driven by Father Christmas.”"

"“Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. That, I think, is still fair. We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can sleep safely in their beds at night. Is that too romantic? Of course, we occasionally do very wicked things”; he grinned like a schoolboy. “And in weighing up the moralities, we rather go in for dishonest comparisons; after all, you can’t compare the ideals of one side with the methods of the other, can you, now?”"

"I should have guessed you’d never have the guts to do your own dirty work, Fiedler. It’s typical of your rotten little half-country and your squalid little Service that you get big uncle to do your pimping for you. You are not a country at all, you’re not a government, you’re a fifth-rate dictatorship of political neurotics."

"I read a story once about a poet who bathed himself in cold fountains so that he could recognise his own existence in the contrast."