"The more intelligent, the less sane."

Quotes from George Orwell's 1984
 

“Tragedy, he perceived, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason”  (30).

“It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy but always against one’s own body…And it is the same, he perceived, in all seemingly heroic or tragic situations. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber, on a sinking ship, the issues that you are fighting for are always forgotten, because the body swells up until it fills the universe, and even when you are not paralyzed by fright or screaming with pain, life is a moment-to-moment struggle against hunger or cold or sleeplessness, against a sour stomach or an aching tooth” (102-3).

“’You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards.’ He told her. She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms around him in delight” (156).

“It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already” (200).

“It is not easy to become sane” (251).

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood” (252).

“What can you do against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?” (262).

“’If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever’” (267).

“For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself” (281).