1984 Quotes

Inside the flat a fruity voice was reading out a list of figures which had something to do with the production of pig-iron. The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. The people of Oceania are constantly being monitored by the Party.

A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledgehammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one’s will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. Describes the ‘Two Minutes Hate’, the daily public period during which Party members must watch a film depicting Goldstein and other enemies or the state, so they can loudly express hatred for them.

‘You’re a traitor!’ yelled the boy. ‘You’re a thought criminal! You’re a Eurasian spy! I’ll shoot you, I’ll vaporize you, I’ll send you to the salt mines!’ Suddenly they were both leaping around him, shouting ‘Traitor!’ and ‘Thought-criminal!’, the little girl imitating her brother in every movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gamboling of tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 2. Yes even kids can sometimes turn against their own parents. The children of Tom Parsons leap around the obnoxious Party member who works at the Ministry of Truth. Parsons’ ill-mannered kids are members of the Junior Spies and eventually betray him.

Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 4. Winston’s thoughts as he invents the fictitious war hero Comrade Ogilvy, while ‘rectifying’ historical documents at the Ministry of Truth. His job is to falsify the past to accord with the Party’s latest version of reality. A written example of ‘doublethink’.

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, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. When Winston Smith sets out to challenge the Party’s power, he discovers the real extend of its ability to control and enslave people . In this society thoughts are not free.

In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 3. Does Big Brother actually exist? There may have been such a person, but Winston knows that the stories told about Big Brother change and become embellished over time. To the Party and the population, his symbolic meaning the important thing.

With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 3. Winston dreams about the ‘Golden Country’ where a dark-haired woman comes from across the field, and with one movement, flings off her clothes in a disdainful gesture. He is overwhelmed with admiration for the gesture.
Close