“Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.”

“Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.”

“Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.”

“Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.”

“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.”

“We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

“Some ideas are so stupid that only intellectuals believe them.”