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Almost As Swiftly As He Had Imagined It, She Had Torn Her Clothes Off, And When She Flung Them Aside It Was With That Same Magnificent Gesture By Which A Whole Civilization Seemed To Be Annihilated.

-George Orwell

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Almost As Swiftly As

George Orwell

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Almost As Swiftly As He Had Imagined It, She Had Torn Her Clothes Off, And When She Flung Them Aside It Was With That Same Magnificent Gesture By Which A Whole Civilization Seemed To Be Annihilated.

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It Was Soon Noticed That When Ever There Was Work To Be Done The Cat Could Never Be Found.

The Puritanical Nonsense Of Excluding Children And Therefore To Some Extent Women From Pubs Has Turned These Places Into Mere Boozing Shops Instead Of The Family Gathering Places That They Ought To Be.

Weakness Is Strength.

The Essential Act Of War Is Destruction, Not Necessarily Of Human Lives, But Of The Products Of Human Labor.

In So Far As It Takes Effect At All, Pacifist Propaganda Can Only Be Effective Against Those Countries Where A Certain Amount Of Freedom Of Speech Is Still Permitted; In Other Words It Is Helpful To Totalitarianism.

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He Gazed Up At The Enormous Face. Forty Years It Had Taken Him To Learn What Kind Of Smile Was Hidden Beneath The Dark Moustache. O Cruel, Needless Misunderstanding! O Stubborn, Self-willed Exile From The Loving Breast! Two Gin-scented Tears Trickled Down The Sides Of His Nose. But It Was All Right, Everything Was All Right, The Struggle Was Finished. He Had Won The Victory Over Himself. He Loved Big Brother

Huge Events Like The Ukraine Famine Of 1933, Involving The Deaths Of Millions Of People, Have Actually Escaped The Attention Of The Majority Of English Russophiles.

It Was Intended That When Newspeak Had Been Adopted Once And For All And Oldspeak Forgotten, A Heretical Thought...should Be Literally Unthinkable, At Least So Far As Thought Is Dependent On Words.

In Our Time Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible.

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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. 'who Controls The Past' Ran The Party Slogan, 'controls The Future: Who Controls The Present Controls The Past.

At Any Given Moment, There Is A Sort Of All Pervading Orthodoxy, A General Tacit Agreement Not To Discuss Large And Uncomfortable Facts.

Revolutions Only Effect A Radical Improvement When The Masses Are Alert And Know How To Chuck Out Their Leaders As Soon As The Latter Have Done Their Job.

This Life We Live Nowadays. It's Not Life, It's Stagnation Death-in-life. Look At All These Bloody Houses And The Meaningless People Inside Them. Sometimes I Think We're All Corpses. Just Rotting Upright.

Tragedy, He Precieved, Belonged To The Ancient Time, To A Time When There Were Still Privacy, Love, And Friendship, And When The Members Of A Family Stood By One Another Without Needing To Know The Reason.

Love And Friendship

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.

Enlightened People Seldom Or Never Possess A Sense Of Responsibility.

Freedom Is The Freedom To Say That Two Plus Two Make Four. If That Is Granted, All Else Follows.

Except For The Small Revolutionary Groups Which Exist In All Countries, The Whole World Was Determined Upon Preventing Revolution In Spain. In Particular The Communist Party, With Soviet Russia Behind It, Had Thrown Its Whole Weight Against The Revolution. It Was The Communist Thesis That Revolution At This Stage Would Be Fatal And That What Was To Be Aimed At In Spain Was Not Workers' Control, But Bourgeois Democracy. It Hardly Needs Pointing Out Why 'liberal' Capitalist Opinion Took The Same Line.

All Tyrannies Rule Through Fraud And Force, But Once The Fraud Is Exposed They Must Rely Exclusively On Force.

In Our Age There Is No Such Thing As 'keeping Out Of Politics.' All Issues Are Political Issues, And Politics Itself Is A Mass Of Lies, Evasions, Folly, Hatred And Schizophrenia.

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In General, The Greater The Understanding, The Greater The Delusion; The More Intelligent, The Less Sane.

Antisemitism, For Instance, Is Simply Not The Doctrine Of A Grown-up Person.

One Wants To Live, Of Course, Indeed One Only Stays Alive By Virtue Of The Fear Of Death.

The Communism Of The English Intellectual Is Something Explicable Enough. It Is The Patriotism Of The Deracinated.

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.

Freedom Of The Press, If It Means Anything At All, Means The Freedom To Criticize And Oppose

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Those Who 'abjure' Violence Can Do So Only Because Others Are Committing Violence On Their Behalf.

Processions, Meetings, Military Parades, Lectures, Waxwork Displays, Film Shows, Telescreen Programs All Had To Be Organized; Stands Had To Be Erected, Effigies Built, Slogans Coined, Songs Written, Rumours Circulated, Photographs Faked.

The Choice For Mankind Lies Between Freedom And Happiness And For The Great Bulk Of Mankind, Happiness Is Better.

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It Is The Same In All Wars; The Soldiers Do The Fighting, The Journalists Do The Shouting, And No True Patriot Ever Gets Near A Front-line Trench, Except On The Briefest Of Propaganda Tours.

Freedom Is The Right To Tell Others What They Don't Want To Hear.

[t]he 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.

What Can You Do Against The Lunatic Who Is More Intelligent Than Yourself, Who Gives Your Arguments A Fair Hearing And Then Simply Persists In His Lunacy?

Serious Sport Is War Minus The Shooting.

It [england] Is A Family In Which The Young Are Generally Thwarted And Most Of The Power Is In The Hands Of Irresponsible Uncles And Bedridden Aunts.

It Had Never Occurred To Him That The Body Of A Woman Of Fifty, Blown Up To Monstrous Dimensions By Childbearing, Then Hardened, Roughened By Work Til It Was Coarse In The Grain Like An Overripe Turnip, Could Be Beautiful. But Is Was So, And After All, He Thought, Why Not?

He Felt As Though He Were Wandering In The Forests Of The Sea Bottom, Lost In A Monstrous World Where He Himself Was The Monster. He Was Alone. The Past Was Dead, The Future Was Unimaginable

All Left-wing Parties In The Highly Industrialized Countries Are At Bottom A Sham, Because They Make It Their Business To Fight Against Something Which They Do Not Really Wish To Destroy. They Have Internationalist Aims, And At The Same Time They Struggle To Keep Up A Standard Of Life With Which Those Aims Are Incompatible. We All Live By Robbing Asiatic Coolies, And Those Of Us Who Are 'enlightened' All Maintain That Those Coolies Ought To Be Set Free; But Our Standard Of Living, And Hence Our 'enlightenment,' Demands That The Robbery Shall Continue.

The Tendency Of Advanced Capitalism Has Been To Enlarge The Middle Class And Not To Wipe It Out, As It Once Seemed Likely To Do.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout Of Some Painful Illness.

The Aims Of These Three Groups Are Entirely Irreconcilable. The Aim Of The High Is To Remain Where They Are. The Aim Of The Middle Is To Change Places With The High. The Aim Of The Low, When They Have An Aim-for It Is An Abiding Characteristic Of The Low That They Are Too Much Crushed By Drudgery To Be More Than Intermittently Conscious Of Anything Outside Their Daily Lives -is To Abolish All Distinctions And Create A Society In Which All Men Shall Be Equal.

There Were Times When The Fact Of Impending Death Seemed As Palpable As The Bed They Lay On, And They Would Cling Together With A Sort Of Despairing Sensuality, Like A Damned Soul Grasping At His Last Morsel Of Pleasure When The Clock Is Within Five Minutes Of Striking. But There Were Also Times When They Had The Illusion Not Only Of Safety But Of Permanence.

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England Is The Most Class-ridden Country Under The Sun. It Is A Land Of Snobbery And Privilege, Ruled Largely By The Old And Silly.

It Was With The Last Revolution And The Coming Of Ingsoc (inglish/english Socialism) That The Latest High Learnt How To Keep Their Position Permanently - By Cultivating Ignorance Among The Other Classes And By Constantly Surveying Them Through The Thought Police. Part Of This Strategy Included The Maintenance Of A State Of Continual Warfare, Which Goldstein Discussed In The Third Chapter. The Three Major Powers Were Not Fighting This Perpetual War For Victory; They Were Fighting To Keep A State Of Emergency Always Present As The Surest Guarantee Of Authoritarianism.

They Could Be Made To Accept The Most Flagrant Violations Of Reality, Because They Never Fully Grasped The Enormity Of What Was Demanded Of Them, And Were Not Sufficiently Interested In Public Events To Notice What Was Happening

Rich People Are Poor People With Money.

Several Of Them Would Have Protested If They Could Have Found The Right Arguments.

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By 'nationalism' I Mean First Of All The Habit Of Assuming That Human Beings Can Be Classified Like Insects And That Whole Blocks Of Millions And Tens Of Millions Of People Can Be Confidently Labeled 'good' Or 'bad'...by 'patriotism' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life, Which One Believes To Be Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People. Patriotism Is Of Its Nature Defensive, Both Militarily And Culturally. Nationalism, On The Other Hand, Is Inseparable From The Desire For Power.

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Despotic Governments Can Stand 'moral Force' Till The Cows Come Home; What They Fear Is Physical Force.

A Scrupulous Writer In Every Sentence That He Writes Will Ask Himself. . . What Am I Trying To Say? What Words Will Express It?...and He Probably Asks Himself. . . Could I Put It More Shortly? But You Are Not Obliged To Go To All This Trouble. You Can Shirk It By Simply Throwing Open Your Mind And Letting The Ready-made Phrases Come Crowding In. They Will Construct Your Sentences For You

Facts, At Any Rate, Could Not Be Kept Hidden. They Could Be Tracked Down By Inquiry, They Could Be Squeezed Out Of You By Torture. But If The Object Was Not To Stay Alive But To Stay Human, What Difference Did It Ultimately Make? They Could Not Alter Your Feelings, For That Matter You Could Not Alter Them Yourself, Even If You Wanted To. They Could Lay Bare In The Utmost Detail Everything That You Had Done Or Said Or Thought; But The Inner Heart, Whose Workings Were Mysterious Even To Yourself, Remained Impregnable.

Happiness Can Only Exist In Acceptance.

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It Was Like Swimming Against A Current That Swept You Backwards However Hard You Struggled, And Then Suddenly Deciding To Turn Round And Go With The Current Instead Of Opposing It. Nothing Had Changed Except Your Own Attitude: The Predestined Thing Happened In Any Case.

The Party Is Not Interested In The Overt Act. The Thought Is All We Care About.

The Mass Of The Rich And The Poor Are Differentiated By Their Incomes And Nothing Else,and The Average Millionaire Is Only The Average Dishwasher Dressed In A New Suit.

In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

The Typical Socialist... A Prim Little Man With A White-collar Job, Usually A Secret Teetotaler And Often With Vegetarian Leanings.

Between Pigs And Human Beings There Was Not And There Need Not Be Any Clash Of Interest Whatsoever.

It Was A Bright Cold Day In April, And The Clocks Were Striking Thirteen.

The Object Of Power Is Power.

Journalism Is Printing What Someone Else Does Not Want Printed: Everything Else Is Public Relations.

History Has Stopped. Nothing Exists Except An Endless Present In Which The Party Is Always Right.

You're Only A Rebel From The Waist Downwards,' He Told Her.

Progress Is Not An Illusion, It Happens, But It Is Slow And Invariably Disappointing.

...the Consciousness Of Being At War, And Therefore In Danger, Makes The Handing-over Of All Power To A Small Caste Seem The Natural, Unavoidable Condition Of Survival.

The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon.

You Must Be An Intellectual. A Normal Person Would Never Believe A Thing Like That.

A Tragic Situation Exists Precisely When Virtue Does Not Triumph But When It Is Still Felt That Man Is Nobler Than The Forces Which Destroy Him.

To Do Anything That Suggested A Taste For Solitude, Even To Go For A Walk By Yourself, Was Always Slightly Dangerous. There Was A Word For It In Newspeak: Ownlife.

They Had Come To A Time When No One Dared Speak His Mind, When Fierce, Growling Dogs Roamed Everywhere, And When You Had To Watch Your Comrades Torn To Pieces After Confessing To Shocking Crimes.

There Is No Test Of Literary Merit Except Survival, Which Is Itself An Index To Majority Opinion.

Today There Were Fear, Hatred, And Pain, But No Dignity Of Emotion, No Deep Or Complex Sorrows.

There Is Hardly Such A Thing As A War In Which It Makes No Difference Who Wins. Nearly Always One Side Stands More Of Less For Progress, The Other Side More Or Less For Reaction.

When I Talk To Anyone Or Read The Writings Of Anyone Who Has Any Axe To Grind, I Feel That Intellectual Honesty And Balanced Judgement Have Simply Disappeared From The Face Of The Earth. Everyone's Thought Is Forensic, Everyone Is Simply Putting A "case" With Deliberate Suppression Of His Opponent's Point Of View, And, What Is More, With Complete Insensitiveness To Any Sufferings Except Those Of Himself And His Friends.

The Result Of This Is That So-called Peace Propaganda Is Just As Dishonest And Intellectually Disgusting As War Propaganda. Like War Propaganda, It Concentrates On Putting Forward A ‘case’, Obscuring The Opponent’s Point Of View And Avoiding Awkward Questions.

A Man May Take To Drink Because He Feels Himself To He A Failure, And Then Fail All The More Completely Because He Drinks. It Is Rather The Same Thing That Is Happening To The English Language. It Becomes Ugly And Inaccurate Because Our Thoughts Are Foolish, But The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

Last Of All Came The Cat, Who Looked Round, As Usual, For The Warmest Place, And Finally Squeezed Herself In Between Boxer And Clover; There She Purred Contentedly Throughout Major's Speech Without Listening To A Word Of What He Was Saying.

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!

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality.

If One Harbours Anywhere In One's Mind A Nationalistic Loyalty Or Hatred, Certain Facts, Although In A Sense Known To Be True, Are Inadmissible.

As A Rule They Will Refuse Even To Sample A Foreign Dish, They Regard Such Things As Garlic And Olive Oil With Disgust, Life Is Unliveable To Them Unless They Have Tea And Puddings.

The Process [of Mass-media Deception] Has To Be Conscious, Or It Would Not Be Carried Out With Sufficient Precision, But It Also Has To Be Unconscious, Or It Would Bring With It A Feeling Of Falsity And Hence Of Guilt.... To Tell Deliberate Lies While Genuinely Believing In Them, To Forget Any Fact That Has Become Inconvenient, And Then, When It Becomes Necessary Again, To Draw It Back From Oblivion For Just So Long As It Is Needed, To Deny The Existence Of Objective Reality And All The While To Take Account Of The Reality Which One Denies All This Is Indispensably Necessary.

The Animals Were Happy As They Had Never Conceived It Possible To Be. Every Mouthful Of Food Was An Acute Positive Pleasure, Now That It Was Truly Their Own Food, Produced By Themselves And For Themselves, Not Doled Out To Them By A Grudging Master.

Poverty Frees Them From Ordinary Standards Of Behaviour, Just As Money Frees People From Work.

I Suppose There Is No Place In The World Where Snobbery Is Quite So Ever-present Or Where It Is Cultivated In Such Refined And Subtle Forms As In An English Public School. Here At Least One Cannot Say That English ‘education’ Fails To Do Its Job. You Forget Your Latin And Greek Within A Few Months Of Leaving School — I Studied Greek For Eight Or Ten Years, And Now, At Thirty-three, I Cannot Even Repeat The Greek Alphabet — But Your Snobbishness, Unless You Persistently Root It Out Like The Bindweed It Is, Sticks By You Till Your Grave.

One Sometimes Gets The Impression That The Mere Words ' Socialism ' And ' Communism ' Draw Towards Them With Magnetic Force Every Fruit-juice Drinker, Nudist, Sandal-wearer, Sex-maniac, Quaker, 'nature Cure' Quack, Pacifist, And Feminist In England.

England Is Perhaps The Only Great Country Whose Intellectuals Are Ashamed Of Their Own Nationality. In Left-wing Circles It Is Always Felt That There Is Something Slightly Disgraceful In Being An Englishman And That It Is A Duty To Snigger At Every English Institution, From Horse Racing To Suet Puddings. It Is A Strange Fact, But It Is Unquestionably True That Almost Any English Intellectual Would Feel More Ashamed Of Standing To Attention During God Save The King Than Of Stealing From A Poor Box.

[...] You Can Get Anything In This World If You Genuinely Don't Want It.

Perhaps It Is Only When People Are Somewhere Near The Starvation Level That They Have Anything To Sing About.

One Of The Effects Of A Safe And Civilized Life Is An Immense Over Sensitiveness Which Makes All The Primary Emotions Somewhat Disgusting.

Political Language... Is Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable, And To Give An Appearance Of Solidity To Pure Wind.

She's Beautiful,' He Murmured. 'she's A Metre Across The Hips, Easily,' Said Julia. 'that Is Her Style Of Beauty,' Said Winston.

We May Find In The Long Run That Tinned Food Is A Deadlier Weapon Than The Machine-gun.

Bombing Is Not Especially Inhumane. War Itself Is Inhumane And The Bombing Plane, Which Is Used To Paralyse Industry And Transport, Is A Relatively Civilised Weapon. 'normal' Or 'legitimate' Warfare Is Just As Destructive Of Inanimate Objects And Enormously So Of Human Lives.

Inanimate Objects

If Liberty Means Anything At All, It Means The Right To Tell People What They Do Not Want To Hear.

Sheer Egoism... Writers Share This Characteristic With Scientists, Artists, Politicians, Lawyers, Soldiers, Successful Businessmen - In Short, With The Whole Top Crust Of Humanity.

No One Believes More Firmly Than Comrade Napoleon That All Animals Are Equal. He Would Be Only Too Happy To Let You Make Your Decisions For Yourselves. But Sometimes You Might Make The Wrong Decisions, Comrades, And Then Where Should We Be?

And Yet, Just For A Moment, What Almost Frightening Power Had Sounded In That Cry From Only A Few Hundred Throats! Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

The Cat Joined The Re-education Committee And Was Very Active In It For Some Days. She Was Seen One Dag Sitting On A Roof And Talking To Some Sparrows Who Were Just Out Of Her Reach. She Was Telling Them That All Animals Were Now Comrades And That Any Sparrow Who Chose Could Come And Perch On Her Paw; But The Sparrows Kept Their Distance.

In Certain Kinds Of Writing, Particularly In Art Criticism And Literary Criticism, It Is Normal To Come Across Long Passages Which Are Almost Completely Lacking In Meaning.

He Wondered Vaguely Whether In The Abolished Past It Had Been A Normal Experience To Lie In Bed Like This, In The Cool Of A Summer Evening, A Man And A Woman With No Clothes On, Making Love When They Chose, Talking Of What They Chose, Not Feeling Any Compulsion To Get Up, Simply Lying There And Listening To Peaceful Sounds Outside. Surely There Could Never Have Been A Time When That Seemed Ordinary?

In This Game That We're Playing, We Can't Win. Some Kinds Of Failure Are Better Than Other Kinds, That's All.

There Are Some Situations From Which One Can Only Escape By Acting Like A Devil Or A Lunatic.

Men Are Only As Good As Their Technical Development Allows Them To Be.

All People Who Have Reached The Point Of Becoming Nations Tend To Despise Foreigners, But There Is Not Much Doubt That The English-speaking Races Are The Worst Offenders. One Can See This From The Fact That As Soon As They Become Fully Aware Of Any Foreign Race They Invent An Insulting Nickname For It.

The Secret Of Rulership Is To Combine A Belief In One’s Own Infallibility With A Power To Learn From Past Mistakes.

In This Country, Intellectual Cowardice Is The Worst Enemy A Writer Or Journalist Has To Face ... Unpopular Ideas Can Be Silenced, And Incovenient Facts Kept Dark, Without The Need For Any Official Ban ... At Any Given Moment There Is An Orthodoxy, A Body Of Iedas Which It Is Assumed That All Right-thinking People Will Accept Without Question.

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

To Survive It Is Often Necessary To Fight And To Fight You Have To Dirty Yourself.

Envy Is A Horrible Thing. It Is Unlike All Other Kinds Of Suffering In That There Is No Disguising It, No Elevating It Into Tragedy. It Is More Than Merely Painful, It Is Disgusting.

The Atmosphere Of Orthodoxy Is Always Damaging To Prose, And Above All It Is Completely Ruinous To The Novel, The Most Anarchical Of All Forms Of Literature.

It Is Almost Universally Felt That When We Call A Country Democratic We Are Praising It; Consequently, The Defenders Of Every Kind Of Regime Claim That It Is A Democracy, And Fear That They Might Have To Stop Using The Word If It Were Tied Down To Any One Meaning.

One Must Choose Between God And Man, And All "radicals" And "progressives", From The Mildest Liberal To The Most Extreme Anarchist, Have In Effect Chosen Man.

I Know It Is The Fashion To Say That Most Of Recorded History Is Lies Anyway. I Am Willing To Believe That History Is For The Most Part Inaccurate And Biased, But What Is Peculiar To Our Own Age Is The Abandonment Of The Idea That History Could Be Truthfully Written.

But The Thought Of Being A Lunatic Did Not Greatly Trouble Him; The Horror Was That He Might Also Be Wrong.

If One Looks Closely One Sees That There Is No Essential Difference Between A Beggar's Livelihood And That Of Numberless Respectable People. Beggars Do Not Work, It Is Said; But Then, What Is Work? A Navvy Works By Swinging A Pick. An Accountant Works By Adding Up Figures. A Beggar Works By Standing Out Of Doors In All Weathers And Getting Varicose Veins, Chronic Bronchitis, Etc. It Is A Trade Like Any Other; Quite Useless, Of Course - But Then, Many Reputable Trades Are Quite Useless.

The Mutability Of The Past Is The Central Tenet Of Ingsoc. Past Events, It Is Argued, Have No Objective Existance, But Survive Only In Written Records And In Human Memories. The Past Is Whatever The Records And The Memories Agree Upon. And Since The Party Is In Full Control Of All Records, And In Equally Full Control Of The Minds Of Its Members, It Follows That The Past Is Whatever The Party Chooses To Make It.

If You Set Yourself To It, You Can Live The Same Life, Rich Or Poor. You Can Keep On With Your Books And Your Ideas. You Just Got To Say To Yourself, "i'm A Free Man In Here" - He Tapped His Forehead - "and You're All Right.

From A Very Early Age, Perhaps The Age Of Five Or Six, I Knew That When I Grew Up I Should Be A Writer. Between The Ages Of About Seventeen And Twenty-four I Tried To Abandon This Idea, But I Did So With The Consciousness That I Was Outraging My True Nature And That Sooner Or Later I Should Have To Settle Down And Write Books.

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

Whoever Is Winning At The Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible.

To See What Is In Front Of One’s Nose Needs A Constant Struggle.

I Did Try Very Hard To Tell The Whole Truth Without Violating My Literary Instincts.

Mankind Is Not Likely To Salvage Civilization Unless He Can Evolve A System Of Good And Evil Which Is Independent Of Heaven And Hell.

Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking--not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

When I Joined The Militia I Had Promised Myself To Kill One Fascist - After All, If Each Of Us Killed One They Would Soon Be Extinct.

Friend Of Fatherless! Fountain Of Happiness! Lord Of The Swill-bucket! Oh, How My Soul Is On Fire When I Gaze At Thy Calm And Commanding Eye. Like The Sun In The Sky, Comrade Napoleon! Thou Are The Giver Of All Thy Creatures Love, Full Belly Twice A Day, Clean Straw To Roll Upon; Every Beast Great Or Small, Sleeps At Peace In His Stall, Thou Watchest Over All, Comrade Napoleon! Had I A Sucking-pig, Ere He Had Grown As Big Even As A Pint Bottle Or A A Rolling-pin He Should Have Learned To Be Faithful And True To Thee, Yes, His First Squeak Should Be Comrade Napoleon!

The Atom Bombs Are Piling Up In The Factories, The Police Are Prowling Through The Cities, The Lies Are Streaming From The Loudspeakers, But The Earth Is Still Going Round The Sun.

It Was Not By Making Yourself Heard But By Staying Sane That You Carried On The Human Heritage.

Man's Greatest Drive Is Not Love Or Hate But To Change Another Person's Writing.

What Opinions The Masses Hold, Or Do Not Hold, Is Looked Upon As A Matter Of Indifference. They Can Be Granted Intellectual Liberty Becasue They Have No Intellect.

I Understand How. I Do Not Understand Why

The Slovenliness Of Our Language Makes It Easier For Us To Have Foolish Thoughts.

You Must Have Seen Great Changes Since You Were A Young Man," Said Winston Tentatively. The Old Man's Pale Blue Eyes Moved From The Darts Board To The Bar, And From The Bar To The Door Of The Gents ... "the Beer Was Better," He Said Finally. "and Cheaper! When I Was A Young Man, Mild Beer - Wallop We Used To Call It - Was Fourpence A Pint. That Was Before The War, Of Course." "which War Was That?" Said Winston. "it's All Wars," Said The Old Man Vaguely. He Took Up His Glass, And His Shoulders Straightened Again. "'ere's Wishing You The Very Best Of 'ealth!

Early In Life I Had Noticed That No Event Is Ever Correctly Reported In A Newspaper.

If It Is Possible To Cut A Word Out, Always Cut It Out

Figures Of Speech

The Great Enemy Of Clear Language Is Insincerity. When There Is A Gap Between One's Real And One's Declared Aims, One Turns, As It Were, Instinctively To Long Words And Exhausted Idioms, Like A Cuttlefish Squirting Out Ink.

Political Language

Modern English, Especially Written English, Is Full Of Bad Habits Which Spread By Imitation And Which Can Be Avoided If One Is Willing To Take The Necessary Trouble. If One Gets Rid Of These Habits One Can Think More Clearly, And To Think Clearly Is A Necessary First Step Toward Political Regeneration: So That The Fight Against Bad English Is Not Frivolous And Is Not The Exclusive Concern Of Professional [or Scholarly] Writers.

You Preferred To Be A Lunatic, A Minority Of One.

Snobbishness, Like Hypocrisy, Is A Check Upon Behaviour Whose Value From A Social Point Of View Has Been Underrated.

No Doubt Alcohol, Tobacco, And So Forth, Are Things That A Saint Must Avoid; But Sainthood Is Also A Thing That Human Beings Must Avoid.

Tea Is One Of The Main Stays Of Civilization In This Country.

I Am Struck Again By The Fact That As Soon As A Working Man Gets An Official Post In The Trade Union Or Goes Into Labour Politics, He Becomes Middle-class Whether He Will Or No. Ie. By Fighting Against The Bourgeoisie He Becomes A Bourgeois. The Fact Is That You Cannot Help Living In The Manner Appropriate And Developing The Ideology Appropriate To Your Income.

If There Really Is Such A Thing As Turning In One's Grave, Shakespeare Must Get A Lot Of Exercise.

A Family With The Wrong Members In Control; That, Perhaps, Is As Near As One Can Come To Describing England In A Phrase.

Day By Day And Almost Minute By Minute The Past Was Brought Up To Date. In This Way Every Prediction Made By The Party Could Be Shown By Documentary Evidence To Have Been Correct; Nor Was Any Item Of News, Or Any Expression Of Opinion, Which Conflicted With The Needs Of The Moment, Ever Allowed To Remain On Record. All History Was A Palimpsest, Scraped Clean And Reinscribed Exactly As Often As Was Necessary.

He [gandhi] Was Not One Of Those Saints Who Are Marked Out By Their Phenomenal Piety From Childhood Onwards, Nor One Of The Other Kind Who Forsake The World After Sensational Debaucheries.

I Sometimes Think That The Price Of Liberty Is Not So Much Eternal Vigilance As Eternal Dirt.

The Pleasures Of Spring Are Available To Everybody And Cost Nothing.

How Right The Working Classes Are In Their "materialism." How Right They Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

To Know And Not To Know, To Be Conscious Of Complete Truthfulness While Telling Carefully Constructed Lies, To Hold Simultaneously Two Opinions Which Cancelled Out, Knowing Them To Be Contradictory And Believing In Both Of Them, To Use Logic Against Logic, To Repudiate Morality While Laying Claim To It, To Believe That Democracy Was Impossible And That The Party Was The Guardian Of Democracy.

His Answer To Every Problem, Every Setback Was “i Will Work Harder!” —which He Had Adopted As His Personal Motto.

What Was Happening Was Only The Working-out Of A Process That Had Started Years Ago. The First Step Had Been A Secret, Involuntary Thought, The Second Had Been The Opening Of The Diary. He Had Moved From Thoughts To Words, And Now From Words To Actions. The Last Step Was Something That Would Happen In The Ministry Of Love. He Had Accepted It. The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

The More Intelligent, The Less Sane

Ignorance In 1984

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

By Using Stale Metaphors, Similes And Idioms, You Save Much Mental Effort, At The Cost Of Leaving Your Meaning Vague, Not Only For Your Reader But For Yourself.

It Is Not Possible For Any Thinking Person To Live In Such A Society As Our Own Without Wanting To Change It.

Thinking Person

Thoughtcrime Does Not Entail Death: Thoughtcrime Is Death.

All Nationalistic Distinctions - All Claims To Be Better Than Somebody Else Because You Have A Different-shaped Skull Or Speak A Different Dialect - Are Entirely Spurious, But They Are Important So Long As People Believe In Them.

News Is Something Somebody Doesn't Want Printed; All Else Is Advertising.

You Would Not Make The Act Of Submission Which Is The Price Of Sanity.

Circus Dogs Jump When The Trainer Cracks His Whip.

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.

A Plongeur Is A Slave, And A Wasted Slave, Doing Stupid And Largely Unnecessary Work. He Is Kept At Work, Ultimately, Because Of A Vague Feeling That He Would Be Dangerous If He Had Leisure. And Educated People, Who Should Be On His Side, Acquiesce In The Process, Because They Know Nothing About Him And Consequently Are Afraid Of Him.

By ' Patriotism ' I Mean Devotion To A Particular Place And A Particular Way Of Life , Which One Believes To Be The Best In The World But Has No Wish To Force On Other People.

The Existence Of Good Bad Literature—the Fact That One Can Be Amused Or Excited Or Even Moved By A Book That One's Intellect Simply Refuses To Take Seriously—is A Reminder That Art Is Not The Same Thing As Cerebration.

If You Want To Keep A Secret, You Must Also Hide It From Yourself.

Keeping Secrets

Poverty Is Spiritual Halitosis.

In Our Time, Political Speech And Writing Are Largely The Defense Of The Indefensible... Thus, Political Language Has To Consist Largely Of Euphemism, Question-begging, And Sheer Cloudy Vagueness... Political Language [is] Designed To Make Lies Sound Truthful And Murder Respectable.

Political Language

Writing A Novel Is Agony.

As With The Christian Religion, The Worst Advertisement For Socialism Is Its Adherents.

To Exchange One Orthodoxy For Another Is Not Necessarily An Advance. The Enemy Is The Gramophone Mind, Whether Or Not One Agrees With The Record That Is Being Played At The Moment.

True Freedom Is The Right To Say Something That Others Don't Want To Hear.

In Real Life It Is Always The Anvil That Breaks The Hammer.

This Work Was Strictly Voluntary, But Any Animal Who Absented Himself From It Would Have His Rations Reduced By Half.

Ignorance And Prejudice Are The Ballast Of Our Ship Of State - However, Ships Without Ballast Are Not Seaworthy And Cannot Sail In The Tempests, Nor Reach A Safe Harbor.

The English Are Probably More Capable Than Most Peoples Of Making Revolutionary Change Without Bloodshed. In England, If Anywhere,it Would Be Possible To Abolish Poverty Without Destroying Liberty.

On A Ruinous Wall I Came Upon A Poster Dating From The Previous Year And Announcing That ‘six Handsome Bulls’ Would Be Killed In The Arena On Such And Such A Date. How Forlorn Its Faded Colours Looked. Where Were The Handsome Bulls And The Handsome Bull-fighters Now? It Appeared That Even In Barcelona There Were Hardly Any Bullfights Nowadays - For Some Reason All The Best Matadors Were Fascists.

In The Past The Need For A Hierarchal Form Of Society Has Been The Doctrine Specifically Of The High. It Had Been Preached By Kings And Aristocrats And The Priests, Lawyers And The Like Who Were Parasitical Upon Them, And It Had Generally Been Softened By Promises Of An Imaginary World Beyond The Grave.

Even The Humblest Party Member Is Expected To Be Competent, Industrious, And Even Intelligent Within Narrow Limits, But It Is Also Necessary That He Should Be A Credulous And Ignorant Fanatic Whose Prevailing Moods Are Fear, Hatred, Adulation, And Orgiastic Triumph. In Other Words It Is Necessary That He Should Have The Mentality Appropriate To A State Of War. It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Actually Happening, And, Since No Decisive Victory Is Possible, It Does Not Matter Whether The War Is Going Well Or Badly. All That Is Needed Is That A State Of War Should Exist.

Free Speech Is My Right To Say What You Don't Want To Hear.

The Point Is That We Are All Capable Of Believing Things Which We Know To Be Untrue, And Then, When We Are Finally Proved Wrong, Impudently Twisting The Facts So As To Show That We Were Right. Intellectually, It Is Possible To Carry On This Process For An Indefinite Time: The Only Check On It Is That Sooner Or Later A False Belief Bumps Up Against Solid Reality, Usually On A Battlefield.

If You Want A Vision Of The Future, Imagine A Boot Stamping On A Human Face - Forever.

Some Hams Hanging In The Kitchen Were Taken Out For Burial

Why Was It That They Could Never Shout Like That About Anything That Mattered?

If You Turn The Other Cheek, You Will Get A Harder Blow On It Than You Got On The First One. This Does Not Always Happen, But It Is To Be Expected, And You Ought Not To Complain If It Does Happen.

Whoever Controls The Image And Information Of The Past Determines What And How Future Generations Will Think; Whoever Controls The Information And Images Of The Present Determines How Those Same People Will View The Past." "he Who Controls The Past Commands The Future. He Who Commands The Future Conquers The Past.

The Planting Of A Tree, Especially One Of The Long-living Hardwood Trees, Is A Gift Which You Can Make To Posterity At Almost No Cost And With Almost No Trouble, And If The Tree Takes Root It Will Far Outlive The Visible Effect Of Any Of Your Other Actions, Good Or Evil.

Never Use A Foreign Phrase, A Scientific Word, Or A Jargon Word If You Can Think Of An Everyday English Equivalent.

Mrs Weaver Nosed Among The Books, Too Dim-witted To Grasp That They Were In Alphabetical Order.

It Was Almost Normal For People Over Thirty To Be Frightened Of Their Own Children

In A Way, The World-view Of The Party Imposed Itself Most Successfully On People Incapable Of Understanding It. They Could Be Made To Accept The Most Flagrant Violations Of Reality, Because They Never Fully Grasped The Enormity Of What Was Demanded Of Them, And Were Not Sufficiently Interested In Public Events To Notice What Was Happening. By Lack Of Understanding They Remained Sane. They Simply Swallowed Everything, And What They Swallowed Did Them No Harm, Because It Left No Residue Behind, Just As A Grain Of Corn Will Pass Undigested Through The Body Of A Bird.

All Art Is Propaganda; On The Other Hand, Not All Propaganda Is Art.

There Are Books That One Reads Over And Over Again, Books That Become Part Of The Furniture Of One's Mind And Alter One's Whole Attitude To Life, Books That One Dips Into But Never Reads Through, Books That One Reads At A Single Sitting And Forgets A Week Later.

There Are Some Things Only Intellectuals Are Crazy Enough To Believe.

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Michael P. Anderson

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