Benjamin Britton’s Reviews > 1984 > Status Update

"You hate him. Good. The the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him; you must love him."

"We control life, Winston, at all its level. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable.

"The beatings grew less frequent, and became mainly a threat, a horror to which he could be sent back at any moment when his answers were unsatisfactory."

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

"Those whose attitude toward the war is most nearly rational are subject peoples of the disputed territories. To these people the war is simply a continuous calamity which sweeps to and fro over their bodies like a tidal wave. Which side is winning is a matter of complete indifference to them."

"The war is waged by each ruling group against its subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but keep the structure of society intact."

"They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable."

"By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."

"Only because I prefer a positive to a negative. In this game that we're playing, we can't win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that's all."

"Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act."