“What is to be expected of them is not treachery, or physcial cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing.”

“One way of feeling infallible is not to keep a diary”

“A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.”

“Any kind of organized revolt against the party, which was bound to be a failure, struck her as stupid. The clever thing to do was to break the rules and stay alive all the same.”

“The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one’s own infallibility with a power to learn from past mistakes.”

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

“Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”