“Unless you are terribly, terribly careful, you run the danger-- without even knowing it is happening to you-- of slipping into the fatal error of reflecting the public taste instead of creating it. Your responsibility is to the public consciousness, not to the public view of itself.”

“If you want to create a high-society, you must give high things to the public! Show the public eagle; public will be an eagle! Show the public a rat, public will be a rat! Whatever you give to the public, public will take that! To create a high-society, you must give high things to the public!”

“Writing without responsibility is like taking out your cloths in public and begging people to not look at you.”

“The library, I believe, is the last of our public institutionsto which you can go without credentials.You don't even need the sticker on your windshieldthat you need to get into the public beach.All you need is the willingness to read.”

“Publicity is like poison. It doesn't hurt unless you swallow it.”

“It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself__anything that carried the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called.”