1984

[Preface by Walter Cronkite] p.2
If not a prophecy, what was 1984? It was, as many have noticed, a warning: a warning about the future of human freedom in a world where political organization and technology can manufacture power in dimensions that would have stunned the imaginations of earlier ages.

Chapter V [ONE] p.45&46
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words”

“Take ‘good’, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good’, what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well −better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good’, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still.”

Chapter VII [ONE] p.64&69
For all he knew there might never have been any such law as the jus primae noctis, or any such creature as a capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat.

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

Chapter II [TWO] p.105
“Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.”

That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces.

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

Chapter III [TWO] p.106&107
(...)they could meet only in the streets,

(...)they drifted down the crowded pavements, not quite abreast and never looking at one another,

There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past one another without a sign,

If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones.

Chapter IV [TWO] p.116,118&121
(...)not desire, but affection.

(...)without feeling the obligation to make love every time they met.

Perhaps it was only when people were somewhere near the starvation level that they had anything to sing about.

(...)examining the absurd twelve-hour clock with a sort of tolerant amusement.

Chapter V [TWO] p.124&129
As though to harmonize with the general mood, the rocket bombs had been killing larger numbers of people than usual.

“You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,”

Chapter VII [TWO] p.137&138
If they could make me stop loving you − that would be the real betrayal.

But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings: for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to.

Chapter IX [TWO] p.153&165
War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. 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.

The best books, (...) are those that tell you what you know already.

Chapter I [THREE] p.189
He hardly thought of Julia. He could not fix his mind on her. He loved her and would not betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered what was happening to her.

Chapter I [THREE] p.220
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.


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