Mounir’s Reviews > Nineteen Eighty-Four > Status Update

The intention was to make speech, and especially on any subject not ideologically neutral, as nearly as possible independent of consciousness. [..] Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word DUCKSPEAK, meaning 'to quack like a duck'.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc,but to make all other modes of thought impossible. ..when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought -a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc- should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

In any case, mere control of the features was not enough. For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You must know all the while that it is there, but until it is needed you must not let it emerge into your consciousness in any shape that could be given a name. From now onwards he must not only think right, he must feel right, dream right.

'How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?'
Winston thought. 'By making him suffer,' he said
'Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing...'

'...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.'

'Does Big Brother exist?'
'Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.'
'Does he exist in the same way as I exist?'
'You do not exist.'

"...But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth IS truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party..."

Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother... We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born.

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction - indeed, in some sense was the destruction - of a hierarchical society. [..] If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. [..] For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves...

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of DOUBLETHINK, this aim is simultaneously recognised and not recognised by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living.