Quotes:
“It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. 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.”
“In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.”
“A general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another.”
“Nothing exists except through human consciousness.”
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that could be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well- better, because it’s an exact opposite in itself. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still.”
“In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.”
“Inequality was the unalterable law of human life.”
“The aim of the High is to remain here 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 law 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 are equal.”
“From the point of view of the law, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.”
“’Have you ever seen those bones, Winston? Of course not. Nineteenth century biologists invented them. Before man there was nothing. After man, if he could come to an end, there would be nothing. Outside man there is nothing.’”
“’Slavery is freedom. Alone-free-the human being is always defeated. It must be so, because every human being is doomed to die which is the greatest of all failures. But if he can make a complete, utter submission, if he can escape from his identity, if he can merge himself in the party so that he is the party, then he is all-powerful and immortal.’”