"How could you tell how much of it was lies? It MIGHT be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. The only evidence to the contrary was the mute protest in your own bones, the instinctive feeling that the conditions you lived in were intolerable and that at some other time they must have been different. It struck him that the truly characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Nineteen Eighty-Four
213 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Nineteen Eighty-Four →
Related Quotes
"Even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without genera…"
"Promiscuity went unpunished, divorce was permitted. For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted…"
"It was not necessary to know much. So long as they continued to work and breed, their other activities were without i…"
"It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primi…"
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
"The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes. Even the civil police interfered with them…"
"The Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the applicat…"
"Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the pro…"
"A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating …"
"He took out of the drawer a copy of a children's history textbook which he had borrowed from Mrs Parsons, and began c…"