Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated hen-house.

Once again, no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

And the more one is conscious of one’s political bias, the more chance one has of acting politically without sacrificing one’s aesthetic and intellectual integrity.

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language – so the argument runs – must inevitably share in the general collapse.

or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.

the concrete melts into the abstract

Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies ‘something not desirable’.

this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable