1984 quotes

View Quote O'Brien: There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates.
Winston Smith: I am attentive to the news. O'Brien Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until... in a thousand years...

View Quote O'Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston Smith: I hate him.
O'Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.

View Quote Syme: Beautiful thing, the destruction of words
Parsons: Keep away from me, Smith. 'm an agent of Goldstein. I didn't know it myself. Thoughtcrime is so insidious. It just creeps up on you. My daughter found it out. Very proud of her. Very grateful 've been discovered before it's too late. They won't shoot me, will they, Smith?

View Quote Winston Smith: I know you'll fail. Something in this world... some spirit you will never overcome...
O'Brien: What is it, this principle?
Winston Smith: I don't know. The spirit of man.
O'Brien: And do you consider yourself a man?
Winston Smith: Yes.
O'Brien: If you're a man, Winston, you're the last man. Your kind is extinct. We are the inheritors. Do you realize that you are alone? You are outside history. You unexist. Get up.
[Winston gets up and O'Brien shows him his reflection in a mirror. Winston is disheveled and beaten]
O'Brien: That is the last man. If you are human, that is humanity.

View Quote Winston Smith: It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important. What counts is that we don't betray each other.
Julia: If you mean confessing, we're bound to do that. Everybody does. You can't help it.
Winston Smith: I don't mean confessing. Confessing isn't betrayal. I mean feelings. If they can make me change my feelings. If they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal.
Julia: They can't do that. It's the one thing they can't do. They can torture you, make you say anything. But they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you. They can't get to your heart.

View Quote Winston Smith: Look, I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.
Julia: Well, I ought to suit you, then. I'm corrupt to the core.
Winston Smith: Do you like doing this? I don't mean just me...
Julia: I adore it.

View Quote [first lines] This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?

View Quote [In his forbidden diary] April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man... greetings.

View Quote [In his forbidden diary] Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else will follow.

View Quote [In his forbidden diary] If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them.

View Quote [last lines] I love you.

View Quote [reciting poem] Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you / You sold me.

View Quote Do it to her! Do it to Julia! I don't care what you do to her, but do it to her! Tear her face off! Do it to Julia, not to me! Do it to Julia! Not me!

View Quote If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.

View Quote In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact. Julia? Are you awake? There is truth, and there is untruth. To be in a minority of one doesn't make you mad.