Animal Farm and 1984

by George Orwell

“I don’t mean confessing. Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal.”

pg 166

“They can’t do that,” she said finally. “It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything—anything—but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.”

pg 166

But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make?

pg 167

“You can turn it off!” he said. “Yes,” said O’Brien, “we can turn it off. We have that privilege.”

pg 169

just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.

pg 180

Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot.

pg 181

Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.

pg 182

carrying the brief case containing the book, which had remained between his feet while he worked and under his body while he slept, went home, shaved himself, and almost fell asleep in his bath, although the water was barely more than tepid. With a sort of voluptuous creaking in his joints he climbed the stair above Mr. Charrington’s shop. He was tired, but not sleepy any longer. He opened the window, lit the dirty little oilstove, and put on a pan of water for coffee. Julia would arrive presently; meanwhile there was the book. He sat down in the sluttish armchair and undid the straps of the brief case. A heavy black volume, amateurishly bound, with no name or title on the cover. The print also looked slightly irregular. The pages were worn at the edges, and fell apart easily, as though the book had passed through many hands. The inscription on the title page ran:

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM

pg 184

With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting.

pg 185

It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference.

pg 186

But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes.

pg 186

The primary aim of modern warfare

pg 188

is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.

pg 188

If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations.

pg 189

The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

pg 190

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

pg 191

A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labor that would build several hundred cargo ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labors another Floating Fortress is built.

pg 191

The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand.

pg 193

no more bombs were dropped. All three powers merely continue to produce atomic bombs and store them up against the decisive opportunity which they all believe will come sooner or later.

pg 195

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity.

pg 198

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

pg 201

But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment.

pg 203

Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed.

pg 206

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

pg 214

The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.

pg 214

Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.

pg 214

he knew that that must be Goldstein’s final message. The future belonged to the proles. And could he be sure that when their time came, the world they constructed would not be just as alien to him, Winston Smith, as the world of the Party? Yes, because at the least it would be a world of sanity. Where there is equality there can be sanity.

pg 220

You were the dead; theirs was the future.

pg 221

“We are the dead,” he said. “We are the dead,” echoed Julia dutifully. “You are the dead,” said an iron voice behind them.

pg 221

The picture had fallen to the floor, uncovering the telescreen behind it.

pg 222

“And by the way, while we are on the subject, Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!”

pg 222

It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.

pg 244

There were times when his nerve so forsook him that he began shouting for mercy even before the beating began, when the mere sight of a fist drawn back for a blow was enough to make him pour forth a confession of real and imaginary crimes. There were other times when he started out with the resolve of confessing nothing, when every word had to be forced out of him between gasps of pain, and there were times when he feebly tried to compromise, when he said to himself: “I will confess, but not yet. I must hold out till the pain becomes unbearable. Three more kicks, two more kicks, and then I will tell them what they want.”

He became simply a mouth that uttered, a hand that signed whatever was demanded of him. His sole concern was to find out what they wanted him to confess, and then confess it quickly, before the bullying started anew. He confessed to the assassination of eminent Party members, the distribution of seditious pamphlets, embezzlement of public funds, sale of military secrets, sabotage of every kind. He confessed that he had been a spy in the pay of the Eastasian government as far back as 1968. He confessed that he was a religious believer, an admirer of capitalism, and a sexual pervert. He confessed that he had murdered his wife, although he knew, and his questioners must have known, that his wife was still alive. He confessed that for years he had been in personal touch with Goldstein and had been a member of an underground organization which had

included almost every human being he had ever known. It was easier to confess everything and implicate everybody.

He was strapped into a chair surrounded by dials, under dazzling lights. A man in a white coat was reading the dials.

It was O’Brien who was directing everything. It was he who set the guards onto Winston and who prevented them from killing him. It was he who decided when Winston should scream with pain, when he should have a respite, when he should be fed, when he should sleep, when the drugs should be pumped into his arm. It was he who asked the questions and suggested the answers. He was the tormentor, he was the protector, he was the inquisitor, he was the friend.

pg 243 ~244

“Don’t worry, Winston; you are in my keeping. For seven years I have watched over you. Now the turning point has come. I shall save you, I shall make you perfect.”

pg 244

“I told you,” said O’Brien, “that if we met again it would be here.”

“That was forty,” said O’Brien. “You can see that the numbers on this dial run up to a hundred. Will you please remember, throughout our conversation, that I have it in my power to inflict pain on you at any moment and to whatever degree I choose.

“I am taking trouble with you, Winston,” he said, “because you are worth trouble. You know perfectly well what is the matter with you. You have known it for years, though you have fought against the knowledge. You are mentally deranged.

“The truth, please, Winston. Your truth. Tell me what you think you remember.”

There was a certain photograph about which you had a hallucination. You believed that you had actually held it in your hands. It was a photograph something like this.”

It was the photograph.

“It exists!” he cried. “No,” said O’Brien.

pg 247

“Ashes,” he said. “Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed.” “But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it.” “I do not remember it,” said O’Brien.

pg 247

That was doublethink.

Does the past exist concretely, in space? Is there somewhere or other a place, a world of solid objects, where the past is still happening?”