1984: Nineteen Eighty-Four

by George Orwell

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU,

You had to live did live, from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.

WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

The Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.

(nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws),

You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.

‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’

to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy,

Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.

Here were produced rubbishy newspapers containing almost nothing except sport, crime and astrology, sensational five−cent novelettes, films oozing with sex, and sentimental songs which were composed entirely by mechanical means on a special kind of kaleidoscope known as a versificator.

You did not have friends nowadays, you had comrades:

We’re cutting the language down to the bone.

‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.

Orthodoxy means not thinking not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’

any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence.

The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act.

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

But simultaneously, true to the Principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules.

A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party.

It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings.

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.

‘Proles and animals are free.’

No one who had once fallen into the hands of the Thought Police ever escaped in the end.

There was only one possible conclusion: the confessions were lies.

To keep your face expressionless was not difficult, and even your breathing could be controlled, with an effort: but you could not control the beating of your heart, and the telescreen was quite delicate enough to pick it up.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.

It was their final, most essential command.

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

In principle a Party member had no spare time, and was never alone except in bed.

There was a word for it in Newspeak: ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.

Anything old, and for that matter anything beautiful, was always vaguely suspect.

It was at night that they came for you, always at night.

The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you.

It struck him that in moments of crisis one is never fighting against an external enemy, but always against one’s own body.

It would not matter if they killed you at once. To be killed was what you expected. But before death (nobody spoke of such things, yet everybody knew of them) there was the routine of confession that had to be gone through: the grovelling on the floor and screaming for mercy, the crack of broken bones, the smashed teeth, and bloody clots of hair.

There was no place where you could be more certain that the telescreens were watched continuously.

By a routine that was not even secret, all letters were opened in transit.