40 Best 1984 Quotes

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. – O'Brien
1984 Power History control Truth propaganda
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – Party Slogan
1984 propaganda Power control Paradox Language
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever. – O'Brien
1984 Power tyranny Future Despair cruelty
Big Brother is Watching You. – Party Slogan
1984 Surveillance control Power paranoia propaganda
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
1984 Power History Truth manipulation control
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. – Winston Smith
1984 Freedom Truth Reality Individuality Defiance
Power is not a means; it is an end. – O'Brien
1984 Power control tyranny ideology
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
1984 Reality Truth Power control conformity
Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death. – Winston Smith
1984 Thought Control conformity Power Rebellion Death
Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?
1984 Language control Power Thought propaganda
We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness. – O'Brien
1984 Hope Deception Betrayal Power Ambiguity
Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
1984 conformity Thought Control ignorance Power
The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.
1984 propaganda control conformity Reality
We are the dead. – Winston Smith
1984 Rebellion Despair defeat identity
Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. – O'Brien
1984 Reality Power control subjectivity Truth
Sanity is not statistical.
1984 Individuality Reality conformity Truth sanity
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious. – Winston Smith
1984 Rebellion Consciousness Power Struggle Proletariat
The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better. – O'Brien
1984 Freedom Happiness control Power Security
Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
1984 Individuality self control Privacy Thought
If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.
1984 Self-Deception Truth control conformity secrecy
The object of power is power. – O'Brien
1984 Power control tyranny ideology
The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
1984 Power cruelty control tyranny Ingsoc
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.
1984 Power corruption control revolution
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.
1984 Power tyranny control ideology
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
1984 Dystopia control Reality Ominous
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
1984 Doublethink Reality control propaganda Psychology
The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.
1984 History Truth propaganda control Memory
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies...
1984 Doublethink Truth Deception control Reality
The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed—would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper—the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime.
1984 Thoughtcrime control Rebellion fear conformity
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.
1984 Power Truth Reality control conformity
We do not destroy the heretic because he resists us; so long as he resists us we never destroy him. – O'Brien
1984 Power control cruelty Conversion defeat
But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. – Winston Smith
1984 defeat control conformity Love Power Betrayal
The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed.
1984 Power Proletariat oppression apathy control
The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.
1984 Thoughtcrime control Power conformity ideology
Being in a minority, even 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.
1984 Individuality Truth sanity Defiance Reality
The secret of rulership is to combine a belief in one's own infallibility with the power to learn from past mistakes.
1984 Power control propaganda Leadership Ingsoc
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?
1984 Reality Power control subjectivity Truth
The terrible thing that the Party had done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world.
1984 Power Emotion control Humanity Despair
The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the lure.
1984 Truth Rebellion Consciousness Knowledge
They could not alter your feelings; for that matter, you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to.
1984 Emotion Humanity self control Individuality
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