George Orwell (pseudonym of Eric Blair [1903-1950]) was born in Bengal and educated at Eton; after service with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, he returned to Europe to earn his living penning novels and essays. He was essentially a political writer who focused his attention on his own times, a man of intense feelings and fierce hates. An opponent of totalitarianism, he served in the Loyalist forces in the Spanish Civil War. Besides his classic Animal Farm, his works include a novel based on his experiences as a colonial policeman, Burmese Days; two firsthand studies of poverty, Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier; an account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War, Homage to Catalonia; and the extraordinary novel of political prophecy whose title became part of our language, 1984.
Below, find the best quotes from 1984 and corresponding page numbers! I utilize my own editions (which match the cover images used below), but regardless, the quotes will appear in order of whichever text you use.
1984 (1950)
- It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
- Part 1, Chapter 1
- Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
- Part 1, Chapter 3
- It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
- Part 1, Chapter 5
- Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
- Part 1, Chapter 7
- For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that he force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?
- Part 1, Chapter 7
- If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.
- Part 2, Chapter 7
- The best books are those that tell you what you know already.
- Part 2, Chapter 9
- Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
- Part 2, Chapter 9
- Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
- Part 2, Chapter 9
- In the face of pain there are no heroes.
- Part 3, Chapter 1
- We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.
- Part 3, Chapter 2
- Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.
- Part 3, Chapter 2
- Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
- Part 3, Chapter 2
- I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own except that you happen to be insane.
- Part 3, Chapter 2
- Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness; only power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from all the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just round the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?
- Part 3, Chapter 3
- Power is tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
- Part 3, Chapter 3
- If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
- Part 3, Chapter 3
- Do you understand that you are alone? You are outside history, you are nonexistent.
- Part 3, Chapter 3
- What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens.
- Part 3, Chapter 4
- If you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself.
- Part 3, Chapter 4
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