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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. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

-George Orwell

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We Are The Dead.

George Orwell

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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. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

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The Most Stirring Battle-poem In English Is About A Brigade Of Cavalry Which Charged In The Wrong Direction.

The Problem Was How To Keep The Wheels Of Industry Turning Without Increasing The Real Wealth Of The World. Goods Must Be Produced, But They Must Not Be Distributed. And In Practice The Only Way Of Achieving This Was By Continuous Warfare.

[political] Prose Consists Less And Less Of Words Chosen For The Sake Of Their Meaning, And More And More Of Phrases Tacked Together Like The Sections Of A Prefabricated Hen-house.

Political Language

The Clock Struck Half Past Two. In The Little Office At The Back Of Mr. Mckechnie's Bookshop, Gordon--gordon Comstock, Last Member Of The Comstock Family, Aged Twenty-nine And Rather Moth-eaten Already--lounged Across The Table, Pushing A Fourpenny Packet Of Player's Weights Open And Shut With His Thumb.

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.

All That Was Required Of Them (i.e. The Brain-washed Masses) Was A Primitive Patriotism Which Could Be Appealed To Whenever It Was Necessary To Make Them Accept Longer Working Hours Or Shorter Rations. And Even When They Became Discontented, As They Sometimes Did, Their Discontent Led Nowhere, Because, Being Without General Ideas, They Could Only Focus It On Petty Specific Grievances. The Larger Evils Invariably Escaped Their Notice.

I Am Afraid Of Death. You Are Young, So Presumably You're More Afraid Of It Than I Am. Obviously We Shall Put If Off As Long As We Can. But It Makes Very Little Difference. So Long As Human Beings Stay Human, Death And Life Are The Same Thing.

Since Pacifists Have More Freedom Of Action In Countries Where Traces Of Democracy Survive, Pacifism Can Act More Effectively Against Democracy Than For It. Objectively The Pacifist Is Pro-nazi.

What Is To Be Expected Of Them Is Not Treachery, Or Physcial Cowardice, But Stupidity, Unconscious Sabotage, An Infallible Instinct For Doing The Wrong Thing.

You Are A Slow Learner, Winston." "how Can I Help It? How Can I Help But See What Is In Front Of My Eyes? Two And Two Are Four." "sometimes, Winston. Sometimes They Are Five. Sometimes They Are Three. Sometimes They Are All Of Them At Once. You Must Try Harder. It Is Not Easy To Become Sane.

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.

If Both The Past And The External World Exist Only In The Mind, And If The Mind Itself Is Controllable - What Then?

The Intellectual Is Different From The Ordinary Man, But Only In Certain Sections Of His Personality, And Even Then Not All The Time.

Man Is The Only Creature That Consumes Without Producing

All Art Is Propaganda.

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.

So Much Of Left-wing Thought Is A Kind Of Playing With Fire By People Who Don't Even Know That Fire Is Hot.

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.

I Often Wondered Whether Any Of The Others Grasped That I Had Done It Solely To Avoid Looking A Fool.

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.

If You Kept The Small Rules, You Could Break The Big Ones.

It Is Deliberate Policy To Keep Even The Favoured Groups Somewhere Near The Brink Of Hardship, Because A General State Of Scarcity Increases The Importance Of Small Privileges And Thus Magnifies The Distinction Between One Group And Another.

The One Certain Thing Was That Death Never Came At An Expected Moment.

The Totalitarian States Can Do Great Things, But There Is One Thing They Cannot Do: They Cannot Give The Factory-worker A Rifle And Tell Him To Take It Home And Keep It In His Bedroom. That Rifle, Hanging On The Wall Of The Working-class Flat Or Laborer's Cottage, Is The Symbol Of Democracy. It Is Our Job To See That It Stays There.

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

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.

The Whole Climate Of Thought Will Be Different. In Fact There Will Be No Thought, As We Understand It Now. Orthodoxy Means Not Thinking - Not Needing To Think. Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Reality Is Inside The Skull.

Writing A Book Is A Horrible, Exhausting Struggle, Like A Long Bout With Some Painful Illness. One Would Never Undertake Such A Thing If One Were Not Driven On By Some Demon Whom One Can Neither Resist Nor Understand.

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.

The Fact Is That Certain Themes Cannot Be Celebrated In Words, And Tyranny Is One Of Them. No One Ever Wrote A Good Book In Praise Of The Inquisition.

The Choice Before Human Beings, Is Not, As A Rule , Between Good And Evil But Between Two Evils. You Can Let The Nazis Rule The World : That Is Evil; Or You Can Overthrow Them By War , Which Is Also Evil. There Is No Other Choice Before You, And Whichever You Choose You Will Not Come Out With Clean Hands.

At Fifty Everyone Has The Face He Deserves.

Patriotism Has Nothing To Do With Conservatism. It Is Actually The Opposite Of Conservatism, Since It Is A Devotion To Something That Is Always Changing And Yet Is Felt To Be Mystically The Same.

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

To Be Corrupted By Totalitarianism, One Does Not Have To Live In A Totalitarian Country.

Totalitarianism

It Is A Mysterious Thing, The Loss Of Faith-as Mysterious As Faith Itself. Like Faith, It Is Ultimately Not Rooted In Logic; It Is A Change In The Climate Of The Mind.

Mysterious Things

All The Papers That Matter Live Off Their Advertisements, And The Advertisers Exercise An Indirect Censorship Over News.

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

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.

Political Language

The Idea Really Came To Me The Day I Got My New False Teeth.

. . . It Is A Corrupting Thing To Live One's Real Life In Secret. One Should Live With The Stream Of Life, Not Against It.

Never Have Ideas About Children, And Never Have Ideas For Them.

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.

No One Is Patriotic About Taxes.

It Is Difficult For A Statesman Who Still Has A Political Future To Reveal Everything That He Knows: And In A Profession In Which One Is A Baby At 50 And Middle-aged At Seventy-five, It Is Natural That Anyone Who Has Not Actually Been Disgraced Should Feel That He Still Has A Future.

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. It Might Be A Thousand Years. At Present Nothing Is Possible Except To Extend The Area Of Sanity Little By Little. We Cannot Act Collectively. We Can Only Spread Our Knowledge Outwards From Individual To Individual, Generation After Generation. In The Face Of The Thought Police There Is No Other Way.

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

Some People Have A Knack, For Example, Of Being Able To Tell When Someone's Lying To Them. They May Not Know What The Truth Is, But They Can Tell When Someone Is Trying To Lead Them Astray Or Sell Them Something Shady. I Think He Had That Ability To An Amazing Degree. I Also Think He Thought, Without Saying It Explicitly, That You Can Convince A Crowd Of Something That's Not True More Easily Than You Can One Person At A Time.

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

I Felt As If I Was The Only Person Awake In A City Of Sleepwalkers. That's An Illusion, Of Course. When You Walk Through A Crowd Of Strangers It's Next Door To Impossible Not To Imagine That They're All Waxworks, But Probably They're Thinking Just The Same About You.

For After All, What Is There Behind, Except Money? Money For The Right Kind Of Education, Money For Influential Friends, Money For Leisure And Peace Of Mind, Money For Trips To Italy. Money Writes Books, Money Sells Them. Give Me Not Righteousness, O Lord, Give Me Money, Only Money.

It Was Only A Hopeless Fantasy, It Passed Like An April Day, But A Look And A Word And The Dreams They Stirred They Have Stolen My Heart Away.

Political Chaos Is Connected With The Decay Of Language... One Can Probably Bring About Some Improvement By Starting At The Verbal End.

Political Language

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.

The Creatures Outside Looked From Pig To Man, And From Man To Pig, And From Pig To Man Again; But Already It Was Impossible To Say Which Was Which.

A Sahib Has Got To Act Like A Sahib; He Has Got To Appear Resolute, To Know His Own Mind And Do Definite Things.

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!

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?

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.

It Is Brought Home To You...that It Is Only Because Miners Sweat Their Guts Out That Superior Persons Can Remain Superior.

Using Clichés Is A Substitute For Thinking

Nationalism Is Power Hunger Tempered By Self-deception.

Anyone Who Challenges The Prevailing Orthodoxy Finds Himself Silenced With Surprising Effectiveness. A Genuinely Unfashionable Opinion Is Almost Never Given A Fair Hearing.

Right Thinking Will Be Rewarded, Wrong Thinking Punished.

We Have Now Sunk To A Depth At Which Restatement Of The Obvious Is The First Duty Of Intelligent Men.

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

In Philosophy, Or Religion, Or Ethics, Or Politics, Two And Two Might Make Five, But When One Was Designing A Gun Or An Aeroplane They Had To Make Four.

The Main Motive For Nonattachment Is A Desire To Escape From The Pain Of Living, And Above All From Love, Which, Sexual Or Non-sexual, Is Hard Work.

I Had The Lonely Child's Habit Of Making Up Stories And Holding Conversations With Imaginary Persons, And I Think From The Very Start My Literary Ambitions Were Mixed Up With The Feeling Of Being Isolated And Undervalued. I Knew That I Had A Facility With Words And A Power Of Facing Unpleasant Facts, And I Felt That This Created A Sort Of Private World In Which I Could Get My Own Back For My Failure In Everyday Life.

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.

Good Prose Should Be Transparent, Like A Window Pane.

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.

Comrades!' He Cried. 'you Do Not Imagine, I Hope, That We Pigs Are Doing This In A Spirit Of Selfishness And Privilege? Many Of Us Actually Dislike Milk And Apples. I Dislike Them Myself. Our Sole Object In Taking These Things Is To Preserve Our Health. Milk And Apples (this Has Been Proved By Science, Comrades) Contain Substances Absolutely Necessary To The Well-being Of A Pig. We Pigs Are Brainworkers. The Whole Management And Organisation Of This Farm Depend On Us. Day And Night We Are Watching Over Your Welfare. It Is For Your Sake That We Drink The Milk And Eat Those Apples.

A Totalitarian State Is In Effect A Theocracy, And Its Ruling Caste, In Order To Keep Its Position, Has To Be Thought Of As Infallible. But Since, In Practice, No One Is Infallible, It Is Frequently Necessary To Rearrange Past Events In Order To Show That This Or That Mistake Was Not Made, Or That This Or That Imaginary Triumph Actually Happened.

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?

The Past Is A Curious Thing. It's With You All The Time. I Suppose An Hour Never Passes Without Your Thinking Of Things That Happened Ten Or Twenty Years Ago, And Yet Most Of The Time It's Got No Reality, It's Just A Set Of Facts That You've Learned, Like A Lot Of Stuff In A History Book. Then Some Chance Sight Or Sound Or Smell, Especially Smell, Sets You Going, And The Past Doesn't Merely Come Back To You, You're Actually In The Past. It Was Like That At This Moment.

The Ministry Of Peace Concerns Itself With War, The Ministry Of Truth With Lies, The Ministry Of Love With Torture And The Ministry Of Plenty With Starvation. These Contradictions Are Not Accidental , Nor Do They Result From From Ordinary Hypocrisy: They Are Deliberate Exercises In Doublethink

Bad Writers Are Nearly Always Haunted By The Notion That Latin Or Greek Words Are Grander Than Saxon Ones.

The Nationalist Not Only Does Not Disapprove Of Atrocities Committed By His Own Side, But He Has A Remarkable Capacity For Not Even Hearing About Them.

Political Language

Atrocities Committed

In A Town Like London There Are Always Plenty Of Not Quite Certifiable Lunatics Walking The Streets, And They Tend To Gravitate Towards Bookshops, Because A Bookshop Is One Of The Few Places Where You Can Hang About For A Long Time Without Spending Any Money.

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.

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.

The Heresy Of Heresies Was Common Sense.

Thoughtcrime Does Not Entail Death: Thoughtcrime Is Death.

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.

A Humanitarian Is Always A Hypocrite.

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?

Totalitarianism, If Not Fought Against, Could Triumph Anywhere.

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

The End Was Contained In The Beginning.

England Will Still Be England, An Everlasting Animal, Stretching Into The Future And The Past And Like All Living Things Having The Power To Change Out Of All Recognition And Yet Remain The Same.

The Object Of Powder Is Powder.

Saints Should Always Be Judged Guilty Until They Are Proved Innocent, But The Tests That Have To Be Applied To Them Are Not, Of Course, The Same In All Cases.

One Always Abandons Something In Retreat. Look At Napoleon At The Beresina! He Abandoned His Whole Army.

Most People Approve Of Capital Punishment, But Most People Wouldn't Do The Hangman's Job.

Threats To Freedom Of Speech, Writing And Action, Though Often Trivial In Isolation, Are Cumulative In Their Effect And, Unless Checked, Lead To A General Disrespect For The Rights Of The Citizen.

Creeds Like Pacifism Or Anarchism, Which Seem On The Surface To Imply A Complete Renunciation Of Power, Rather Encourage This Habit Of Mind. For If You Have Embraced A Creed Which Appears To Be Free From The Ordinary Dirtiness Of Politics ... The More You Are In The Right (and) Everybody Else Should Be Bullied Into Thinking Otherwise.

Within Certain Limits, It Is Actually True That The Less Money You Have, The Less You Worry.

A Hideous Ecstasy Of Fear And Vindictiveness, A Desire To Kill, To Torture, To Smash Faces In With A Sledge Hammer, 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. 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.

No One, At Any Rate No English Writer, Has Written Better About Childhood Than Dickens. In Spite Of All The Knowledge That Has Accumulated Since, In Spite Of The Fact That Children Are Now Comparatively Sanely Treated, No Novelist Has Shown The Same Power Of Entering Into The Child's Point Of View.

One Does Not Establish A Dictatorship In Order To Safeguard A Revolution; One Makes A Revolution In Order To Establish A Dictatorship.

During Part Of 1941 And 1942, When The Luftwaffe Was Busy In Russia, The German Radio Regaled Its Home Audience With Stories Of Devastating Air Raids On London. Now, We Are Aware That Those Raids Did Not Happen. But What Use Would Our Knowledge Be If The Germans Conquered Britain? For The Purpose Of A Future Historian, Did Those Raids Happen, Or Didn't They? The Answer Is: If Hitler Survives, They Happened, And If He Falls They Didn't Happen.

Manchester Is The Belly And Guts Of The Nation

Napoleon Is Always Right.

It Is Fatal To Look Hungry. It Makes People Want To Kick You.

The Very Word 'war', Therefore, Has Become Misleading. It Would Probably Be Accurate To Say That By Becoming Continuous War Has Ceased To Exist. ... War Is Peace.

The Primary Aim Of Modern Warfare ... Is To Use Up The Products Of The Machine Without Raising The General Standard Of Living.

The Object Of Terrorism Is Terrorism. The Object Of Oppression Is Oppression. The Object Of Torture Is Torture. The Object Of Murder Is Murder. The Object Of Power Is Power. Now Do You Begin To Understand Me?

Four Legs Gooood, Two Legs Baaad!

When It Comes To The Pinch, Human Beings Are Heroic. Women Face Childbed And The Scrubbing Brush, Revolutionaries Keep Their Mouths Shut In The Torture Chamber, Battleships Go Down With Their Guns Still Firing When Their Decks Are Awash.

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

It Was True That There Was No Such Person As Comrade Oglivy, But A Few Lines Of Print And A Couple Of Faked Photographs Would Soon Bring Him Into Existence... Comrade Oglivy, 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.

For If Leisure And Security Were Enjoyed By All Alike, The Great Mass Of Human Beings Who Are Normally Stupefied By Poverty Would Become Literate And Would Learn To Think For Themselves; And When Once They Had Done This, They Would Sooner Or Later Realise That The Privileged Minority Had No Function, And They Would Sweep It Away. In The Long Run, A Hierarchical Society Was Only Possible On A Basis Of Poverty And Ignorance.

There Is No Swifter Route To The Corruption Of Thought Than Through The Corruption Of Language

The Party Told You To Reject The Evidence Of Your Eyes And Ears. It Was Their Final, Most Essential Command. His Heart Sank As He Thought Of The Enormous Power Arrayed Against Him, The Ease With Which Any Party Intellectual Would Overthrow Him In Debate, The Subtle Arguments Which He Would Not Be Able To Understand, Much Less Answer. And Yet He Was In The Right! They Were Wrong And He Was Right.

[a] World In Which It Is Wrong To Murder An Individual Civilian And Right To Drop A Thousand Tons Of High Explosive On A Residential Area Does Sometimes Make Me Wonder Whether This Earth Of Ours Is Not A Loony Bin Made Use Of By Some Other Planet. Not To Have A National Anthem Would Be Logical.

The Machine Has Got To Be Accepted, But It Is Probably Better To Accept It Rather As One Accepts A Drug - That Is, Grudgingly And Suspiciously. Like A Drug, The Machine Is Useful, Dangerous, And Habit-forming. The Oftener One Surrenders To It The Tighter Its Grip Becomes.

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

The Major Problem Of Our Time Is The Decay In The Belief In Personal Immortality, And It Cannot Be Dealt With While The Average Human Being Is Either Drudging Like An Ox Or Shivering In Fear Of The Secret Police... How Right [the Working Classes] Are To Realize That The Belly Comes Before The Soul, Not In The Scale Of Values But In Point Of Time!

It Is Impossible To Found A Civilization On Fear And Hatred And Cruelty. It Would Never Endure.' 'why Not?' 'it Would Have No Vitality. It Would Disintegrate. It Would Commit Suicide.

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.

But The Thing That I Saw In Your Face No Power Can Disinherit: No Bomb That Ever Burst Shatters The Crystal Spirit.

The War Is Not Meant To Be Won, It Is Meant To Be Continuous.

The Human Beings Did Not Hate Animal Farm Any Less Now That It Was Prospering; Indeed, They Hated It More Than Ever.

If Publishers And Editors Exert Themselves To Keep Certain Topics Out Of Print, It Is Not Because They Are Frightened Of Prosecution But Because They Are Frightened Of Public Opinion. In This Country Intellectual Cowardice Is The Worst Enemy A Writer Or Journalist Has To Face, And That Fact Does Not Seem To Me To Have Had The Discussion It Deserves.

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

In The Nineteenth Century Some Parts Of The World Were Unexplored, But There Was Almost No Restriction On Travel.:; Up To 1914 You Did Not Need A Passport For Any Country Except Russia.:; The European Emigrant, If He Could Scrape Together A Few Pounds For The Passage, Simply Set Sail For America Or Australia, And When He Got There No Questions Were Asked.:; In The Eighteenth Century It Had Been Quite Normal And Safe To Travel In A Country With Which Your Own Country Was At War.

Orthodoxy Is Unconsciousness.

Unconsciousness

Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue. By This Test Beggars Fail, And For This They Are Despised. If One Could Earn Even Ten Pounds A Week At Begging, It Would Become A Respectable Profession Immediately. A Beggar, Looked At Realistically, Is Simply A Businessman, Getting His Living, Like Other Businessmen, In The Way That Comes To Hand. He Has Not, More Than Most Modem People, Sold His Honour; He Has Merely Made The Mistake Of Choosing A Trade At Which It Is Impossible To Grow Rich.

In All The Modern Talk About Energy, Efficiency, Social Service And The Rest Of It, What Meaning Is There Except "get Money, Get It Legally, And Get A Lot Of It"? Money Has Become The Grand Test Of Virtue.

War Is A Way Of Shattering To Pieces... Materials Which Might Otherwise Be Used To Make The Masses Too Comfortable And... Too Intelligent.

Contrary To Popular Belief, The Past Was Not More Eventful Than The Present. If It Seems So It Is Because When You Look Backward Things That Happened Years Apart Are Telescoped Together, And Because Very Few Of Your Memories Come To You Genuinely Virgin.

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.

Many People Genuinely Do Not Want To Be Saints, And It Is Probable That Some Who Achieve Or Aspire To Sainthood Have Never Felt Much Temptation To Be Human Beings.

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

It Is One Of The Tragedies Of The Half-educated That They Develop Late, When They Are Already Committed To Some Wrong Way Of Life.

Clover Was A Stout Motherly Mare Approaching Middle Life, Who Had Never Quite Got Her Figure Back After Her Fourth Foal.

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.

As I Write, Highly Civilized Human Beings Are Flying Overhead, Trying To Kill Me.

They Say That Time Heals All Things, They Say You Can Always Forget; But The Smiles And The Tears Across The Years They Twist My Heart Strings Yet!

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

The More Intelligent, The Less Sane

Ignorance In 1984

From The Proletarians Nothing Is To Be Feared. Left To Themselves, They Will Continue From Generation To Generation And From Century To Century, Working, Breeding, And Dying, Not Only Without Any Impulse To Rebel, But Without The Power Of Grasping That The World Could Be Other Than It Is.

And It Is A Great Thing To Die In Your Own Bed, Though It Is Better Still To Die In Your Boots.

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.

By The Time You Have Perfected Any Style Of Writing, You Have Always Outgrown It.

Do You Remember Writing In Your Diary," He Said, "that It Did Not Matter Whether I Was A Friend Or An Enemy, Since I Was At Least A Person Who Understood You And Could Be Talked To? You Were Right. I Enjoy Talking To You. Your Mind Appeals To Me. It Resembles My Own Mind Except That You Happen To Be Insane.

International Football Is The Continuation Of War By Other Means.

Windmill Or No Windmill, He Said, Life Would Go On As It Had Always Gone On--that Is, Badly.

Only Old Benjamin Professed To Remember Every Detail Of His Long Life And To Know That Things Never Had Been, Nor Ever Could Be Much Better Or Much Worse--hunger, Hardship, And Disappointment Being, So He Said, The Unalterable Law Of Life.

The Prime Necessities For Success In Life Are Money, Athleticism, Tailor Made Clothes And A Charming Smile.

It's Not So Much Staying Alive, It's Staying Human That's Important. What Counts Is That We Don't Betray Each Other.

Does Big Brother Exist?" "of Course He Exists. The Party Exists. Big Brother Is The Embodiment Of The Party." "does He Exist In The Same Way As I Exist?" "you Do Not Exist.

I Think I Exist,' He Said Wearily. 'i Am Conscious Of My Own Identity. I Was Born, And I Shall Die. I Have Arms And Legs. I Occupy A Particular Point In Space. No Other Solid Object Can Occupy The Same Point Simultaneously.

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

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.

One Cannot Really Be A Catholic And Grown Up.

Advertising Is The Rattling Of A Stick Inside A Swill Bucket.

I Have The Most Evil Memories Of Spain, But I Have Very Few Bad Memories Of Spaniards.

To Walk Through The Ruined Cities Of Germany Is To Feel An Actual Doubt About The Continuity Of Civilization.

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.

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

[t]he Outcry Against Killing Women, If You Accept Killing At All, Is Sheer Sentimentality.:; Why Is It Worse To Kill A Woman Than A Man?

The Mute Protest In Your Own Bones

The Past Was Erased, The Erasure Was Forgotten, The Lie Became The Truth.

All Human Relationships Must Be Purchased With Money.

Human Relations

Human Relationships

He Wears A Mask, And His Face Grows To Fit It.

I Hate Purity, I Hate Goodness! I Don't Want Virtue To Exist Anywhere. I Want Everyone To Be Corrupt To The Bones.

The Whole Question Of Evolution Seems Less Momentous Than It Did, Because, Unlike The Victorians, We Do Not Feel That To Be Descended From Animals Is Degrading To Human Dignity.

For The Ordinary Man Is Passive. Within A Narrow Circle (home Life, And Perhaps The Trade Unions Or Local Politics) He Feels Himself Master Of His Fate, But Against Major Events He Is As Helpless As Against The Elements. So Far From Endeavoring To Influence The Future, He Simply Lies Down And Lets Things Happen To Him.

War Is War. The Only Good Human Being Is A Dead One.

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.

If I Had To Make A List Of Six Books Which Were To Be Preserved When All Others Were Destroyed, I Would Certainly Put Gulliver's Travels Among Them.

It Could Not Have Been Ten Seconds, And Yet It Seemed A Long Time That Their Hands Were Clasped Together. He Had Time To Learn Every Detail Of Her Hand.

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.

In The Face Of Pain There Are No Heroes.

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

If He Thinks He Floats Off The Floor, And If I Simultaneously Think I See Him Do It, Then The Thing Happens.

We Do Not Merely Destroy Our Enemies; We Change Them.

Certainly All "progressive" Thought, Has Assumed Tacitly That Human Beings Desire Nothing Beyond Ease, Security, And Avoidance Of Pain... Hitler, Because In His Joyless Mind He Feels It With Exceptional Strength, Knows That Human Beings Don't Only Want Comfort, Safety, Short Working-hours, Hygiene, Birth-control And, In General, Common Sense; They Also, At Least Intermittently, Want Struggle And Self-sacrifice, Not To Mention Drums, Flags And Loyalty-parades. However They May Be As Economic Theories, Fascism And Nazism Are Psychologically Far Sounder Than Any Hedonistic Conception Of Life.

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.

You Asked Me Once,' Said O'brien, 'what Was In Room 101. I Told You That You Knew The Answer Already. Everyone Knows It. The Thing That Is In Room 101 Is The Worst Thing In The World.

Nearly All Creators Of Utopia Have Resembled The Man Who Has Toothache, And Therefore Thinks Happiness Consists In Not Having Toothache. They Wanted To Produce A Perfect Society By An Endless Continuation Of Something That Had Only Been Valuable Because It Was Temporary. The Wider Course Would Be To Say That There Are Certain Lines Along Which Humanity Must Move, The Grand Strategy Is Mapped Out, But Detailed Prophecy Is Not Our Business. Whoever Tries To Imagine Perfection Simply Reveals His Own Emptiness.

The Weariness Of The Cell Is The Vigour Of The Organism.

What Happens To You Here Is Forever.

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.

Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad.

Nothing Holds It Together Except An Idea Which Is Indestructible.

You Believe That Reality Is Something Objective, External, Existing In Its Own Right. You Also Believe That The Nature Of Reality Is Self-evident. When You Delude Yourself Into Thinking That You See Something, You Assume That Everyone Else Sees The Same Thing As You. But I Tell You, Winston, That Reality Exists In The Human Mind, And Nowhere Else. Not In The Individual Mind, Which Can Make Mistakes, And In Any Case Soon Perishes: Only In The Mind Of The Paty, Which Is Collective And Immortal.

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.

The Essence Of Oligarchical Rule Is Not Father-to-son Inheritance, But The Persistence Of A Certain World-view And A Certain Way Of Life, Imposed By The Dead Upon The Living. A Ruling Group Is A Ruling Group So Long As It Can Nominate Its Successors. The Party Is Not Concerned With Perpetuating Its Blood But With Perpetuating Itself. Who Wields Power Is Not Important, Provided That The Hierarchical Structure Remains Always The Same.

Power Is Not A Means; It Is An End.

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.

To Die Hating Them, That Was Freedom.

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.

The Seven Commandments: Whatever Goes Upon Two Legs Is An Enemy. Whatever Goes Upon Four Legs, Or Has Wings, Is A Friend. No Animal Shall Wear Clothes. No Animal Shall Sleep In A Bed. No Animal Shall Drink Alcohol. No Animal Shall Kill Any Other Animal. All Animals Are Equal.

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree I Sold You And You Sold Me: There Lie They, And Here Lie We Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

During The First Two Months Of The War It Was The Anarchists More Than Anyone Else Who Had Saved The Situation, And Much Later Than This The Anarchist Militia, In Spite Of Their Indiscipline, Were Notoriously The Best Fighters Among The Purely Spanish Forces.

Weakness Is Strength.

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Jamie Lee Curtis

Sumner Redstone

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