George Orwell, 1984 Quotes
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
The paperweight was the room he was in, and the coral was Julia's life and his own, fixed in a sort of eternity at the heart of the crystal.
Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed- no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.
...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.
For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.
We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing.
Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.
Do you know why you’re here? Shall I tell you why we brought you here? To cure you.To make you sane.
He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.
The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.
The dark-haired girl behind Winston had begun crying out: 'Swine! Swine! Swine!', and suddenly she picked up a heavy Newspeak dictionary and flung it at the screen.
We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.
Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.
It struck him that the true characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.
The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.
The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine-gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use.
The Brotherhood cannot be wiped out because it is not an organization in the ordinary sense. Nothing holds it together except an idea which is indestructible.
From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.
And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp.
It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.
If human equality is to be for ever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
...In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain.
Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.
In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and the foreknowledge of pain.
Has it ever occurred to you, ' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?
If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.
But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him the horror was that he might also be wrong.
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement.
When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.
