1984

by George Orwell

Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Privacy, he said, was a very valuable thing. Everyone wanted a place where they could be alone occasionally.

And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse plows while books are written by machinery.

In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an airplane they had to make four.

He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights. “White to play and mate in two moves.” Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world had black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.