Menu

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

George Orwell Quotes

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. Ingsoc party slogan, which appears throughout the novel. It is a good example of ‘doublethink’, the act of believing contradicting ideas simultaneously.

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. Caption to Ingsoc poster. Big Brother sees and controls everything. Omnipresent and omnipotent, he is the infallible leader to the citizens of Oceania and their God.

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. Opening line from novel, which invites readers to question everything in a world that has changed and clocks strike 13.

It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 5. Language specialist Syme to Wilson on how the Party is going to destroy the language and replace Oldspeak (Standard English) with Newspeak. It will be used to control the minds of the citizens.

More commonly, people who had incurred the displeasure of the Party simply disappeared and were never heard of again.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 4. Anyone found guilty of thoughtcrime is sent to their death. It is what O’Brien threatens Winston with near the end of the novel.

‘Who controls the past’, ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 3. The Party rewrites history to serve its narrative, making it easier to maintain control of the population.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 3. Echoes of Nazism and Hitler who said: ‘If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.’

To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone – to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink – greetings!

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 2. Winston writing. This suggests that the world Winston Smith lives in in one controlled by a corrupt state, where thought is not free.

The past was dead, the future was unimaginable.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 2. The thoughts running through the mind of Winston as he looks the window at the Ingsoc flag waving outside.

We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 2. What Winston’s future torturer O’Brien says to Winston in a dream. Winston will later be taken to the Ministry of Love, where the lights are always on, to be tortured there by O’Brien.

It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 2. The Party indoctrinates everyone, including children, who are sometimes so brainwashed they turn parents in to the Thought Police.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they can’t become conscious.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston writes about the Catch-22 situation concerning the proles and rebellion. He seems to feel they will never gain the consciousness needed for them to rebel.

If there is hope it lies in the proles.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston, writing in his diary. He sees hope for a better future in the very poor social group, the proletarians, or working class.

Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 6. Winston describes Party bid to kill the sex instinct.

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 6. Winston reflects.

There will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 5. Syme explaining the significance of Newspeak to Winston, saying that the Party’s goal is to eliminate the need to think.

The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention…It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant…the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 8. The Big Brother Lottery scam, in which the financially poor proles are preyed upon.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston writing in his diary, to say that truth exists independently of the Party and its ideology.

For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. The thoughts of Winston, who works for the Ministry of Truth, where he alters the historical record to match the Party’s propaganda. Welcome to the world of official deception, surveillance, and manipulation of history by a totalitarian state.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston. Being in a minority does not make your views wrong, you may be just ahead of your time.

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all around him. She had become a physical necessity.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 4. Winston’s desire for Julia.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 3. Winston and Julia discuss whether they should stop their romance to try to stay alive for as long as they can. Winston’s comment suggests he believes that life under the Party is a form of living death.

In this game that we’re playing, we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 3. Winston to Julia. The game of revolt against Big Brother is not winnable. But Winston believes it is better to die hating the Party.

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 3. Julia’s philosophy as is if she keeps the small rules, that will provide a good cover for her illegal acts as she had a reputation for being a good Party member.

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

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 3. Winston thinks about his and Julia’s different attitudes towards the Party.

I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. Winston is not concerned about the number of sexual partners Julia has had, he is attracted by her rebelliousness against the Party.

The more men you’ve had, the more I love you.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. Winston to Julia.

Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. Winston believed that the Party may be rotten beneath its surface.

If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. Winston explains to Julia how he is able to persevere and stand above the influence of the Party’s power.

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.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 7. Julia to Winston. She believes the Party cannot change how you feel and who you are inside.

- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 5
- 6