All Quotes

"Racism keeps people who are being managed from finding out the truth through contact with each other. It serves the insidious purpose of the wars in George Orwell's novel 1984. Orwell's imaginary world is a lot like the real world for black Americans today. But many of us, and most whites, have consistently refused to accept that they live in a managed society where conflict between the races is maintained and managed because it serves a purpose."

"Found the P.M. absorbed in George Orwell's book, 1984. ‘Have you read it, Charles? Oh, you must. I'm reading it for a second time. It is a very remarkable book.’"

"When I traveled in the communist world before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I found that everyone I met who had read the book (clandestinely, of course) expressed immeasurable admiration for it and marveled that a man who had never set foot inside a communist country could not only describe the physical environment so well—the universal smell of cabbage, the grayness of the dilapidated buildings—but also its mental and moral atmosphere. It was almost as if the communist regimes had taken 1984 as a blueprint rather than as a warning."

"1984 has taught millions to look at the conflict between East and West in terms of black and white, and it has shown them a monster Bogy and a monster Scapegoat for all the ills that plague mankind. ... It would be dangerous to blind ourselves to the fact that millions of people in the West may be inclined, in their anguish and fear, to flee from their own responsibility for mankind's destiny and to vent their anger and despair on the giant Bogy-cum-Scapegoat which Orwell's 1984 has done so much to lay before their eyes."

""Have you read this book? You must read it, sir. Then you will known why we must drop the atom bomb on the Bolshies!" With these words a blind, miserable news-vendor recommended to me 1984 in New York, a few weeks before Orwell's death. Poor Orwell, could he ever imagine that his own book would become so prominent an item in the programme of Hate week?"

"When we asked the librarians which book on their shelves best captured their experience, they immediately mentioned 1984. "It smacks of a 1984 kind of government. Big Brother is always watching you," said Chase referring to George Orwell's classic tale about life under a paranoid, all-controlling authoritarian regime. "They told me you don't have to be suspected of any criminal activity to be a target of an NSL. Now they can serve it on anyone. There's no court authorization needed, and they are not telling Congress what's going on. They've made themselves judge, jury, and executioner. "I don't think this makes us safer," Chase continued. "It makes us more fearful. It makes America a more dangerous place if we can't talk about how our government works.""

"In North Korea, every person is property and is owned by a small and mad family with hereditary power. Every minute of every day, as far as regimentation can assure the fact, is spent in absolute subjection and serfdom. The private life has been entirely abolished. One tries to avoid cliché, and I did my best on a visit to this terrifying country in the year 2000, but George Orwell's 1984 was published at about the time that Kim Il-sung set up his system, and it really is as if he got hold of an early copy of the novel and used it as a blueprint."

"Agreeing with all that the critics have written of it, I need not tell you, yet once more, how fine and how profoundly important the book is. May I speak instead of the thing with which the book deals-the ultimate revolution?...I feel that the nightmare of Nineteen Eighty-Four is destined to modulate into the nightmare of a world having more resemblance to that which I imagined in Brave New World. The change will be brought about as a result of a felt need for increased efficiency. Meanwhile, of course, there may be a large-scale biological and atomic war-in which case we shall have nightmares of other and scarcely imaginable kinds."

"Three novels effectively tell the story of Burma's recent history. The link begins with Burmese Days, which chronicles the country's history under British colonialism. Not long after Burma became independent from Britain in 1948, a military dictator sealed off the country from the outside world, launched 'The Burmese Way to Socialism', and turned Burma into one of the poorest countries in Asia. The same story is told in Animal Farm. Finally in Nineteen Eighty-Four Orwell's description of a horrifying and soulless dystopia paints a chillingly accurate picture of Burma today, a country ruled by one of the world's most brutal and tenacious dictatorships. In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four."

"Orwell was almost exactly wrong in a strange way. He thought the world would end with Big Brother watching us, but it ended with us watching Big Brother."

"Since Friday, the book has reached a 9,500 percent increase in sales, he said. He said demand began to lift on Sunday, shortly after the interview Kellyanne Conway, an adviser to Donald J. Trump, gave on “Meet the Press.” In defending a false claim by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, that Mr. Trump had attracted the “largest audience ever to witness an inauguration,” ...When asked... why Mr. Spicer had said something that was provably false, Ms. Conway replied airily, “Don’t be so dramatic.” Mr. Spicer, she said “gave alternative facts.” In the novel 1984 the term “newspeak” refers to language in which... [unpopular]...political ideas, have been eliminated. “Doublethink” is defined as “reality control.” ....an expert on Orwell at the University of Cambridge, said that readers see a natural parallel between the book and the way Mr. Trump and his staff have distorted facts."

"From lowest place when virtuous things proceed, The place is dignified by the doer’s deed."

"A young man, married, is a man that ’s marr’d."

"Make the coming hour o’erflow with joy, And pleasure drown the brim."

"No legacy is so rich as honesty."

"Almost since its publication, people have been saying George Orwell’s 1984 is “more relevant now than ever”. In one respect, though, it hasn’t aged well. This is in its treatment of women, and particularly the character Julia, the lover of the protagonist Winston Smith. Like many female characters in 20th-century novels, Julia feels like a projection of male fantasy...Perhaps the book’s misogyny was an attempt to explore the problem, to understand it and transcend it? Perhaps Orwell saw how he’d shortchanged Julia, but had been taught that women’s real experience had no place in serious fiction? Perhaps her inconsistencies were evidence he’d begun to chafe at this? This is probably fantasy, the fantasy of someone who isn’t ready to let go of Orwell, but can’t make her peace with certain things he wrote. But after two years of working with Orwell’s depiction of Julia, I feel a certain level of comfort in projecting my fantasy back on him."

"[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."

"For those of us who value liberty, these past two years have been a bad dream. It seems like we fell asleep in early 2020 and woke up in 1984! They said that if we just put on a mask and stayed home for two weeks, we’d be able to return to normal. The two weeks came and went and instead of going back to normal they added more restrictions. These past two years have been a story of moving goalposts and “experts” like Anthony Fauci constantly contradicting themselves. Early on, in April 2020, I warned in an article titled “Next in Coronavirus Tyranny: Forced Vaccinations and ‘Digital Certificates,’” that the ultimate goal of the “two weeks” crowd was to force vaccines and a “vaccine passport” on Americans. My concerns were at the time written off as just another conspiracy theory. But less than a year later that “conspiracy theory” became conspiracy fact. I am not happy about being right on this. The introduction of vaccine passports was from the beginning my worst nightmare. The idea that you must “show your papers” to participate in society is a concept that is totally opposed to a free society. It is inhuman."

"The question remains, why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what appears to be a scholarly appendix? The answer may lie in simple grammar. From its first sentence, "The Principles of Newspeak" is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest some later piece of history, post-1984, in which Newspeak has become literally a thing of the past — as if in some way the anonymous author of this piece is by now free to discuss, critically and objectively, the political system of which Newspeak was, in its time, the essence. Moreover, it is our own pre-Newspeak English language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has even, somehow, been restored."

"Orwell's 1984 explained that "the special function of certain Newspeak words … was not so much to express meanings as to destroy them." During the week after U.S. missiles hit sites in Sudan and Afghanistan, some Americans seemed uncomfortable. A vocal minority even voiced opposition. But approval was routine among those who had learned a few easy Orwellian lessons... At all times, Americans must be kept fully informed about who to hate and fear... When terrorists attack, they're terrorizing. When we attack, we're retaliating. When they respond to our retaliation with further attacks, they're terrorizing again... No matter how many times they've lied in the past, U.S. officials are credible in the present. When they... [say] the bombed pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum was making ingredients for nerve gas, that should be good enough for us.... Might doesn't make right — except in the real world, when it's American might. Only someone of dubious political orientation would split hairs about international law."

"My God, what an impact [1984] had on me. The idea of Big Brother was, and I may still, influence my thinking about democracy; the idea that we would have a government that was all-knowing and all-doing for human beings was frightening…That was a seminal piece in my waking up to the role of government in individual lives."

"Be thou blest, Bertram; and succeed thy father In manners, as in shape! thy blood and virtue Contend for empire in thee; and thy goodness Share with thy birthright! Love all, trust a few, Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy Rather in power than use, and keep thy friend Under thy own life’s key: be check’d for silence, But never tax’d for speech. What heaven more will That thee may furnish, and my prayers pluck down, Fall on thy head!"

"'T were all one That I should love a bright particular star, And think to wed it."

"The hind, that would be mated by the lion, Must die for love."

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie, Which we ascribe to Heaven."

"His good remembrance, sir, Lies richer in your thoughts, than on his tomb; So in approof lives not his epitaph, As in your royal speech."

"Service is no heritage."

"He must needs go, that the devil drives."

"Even so it was with me, when I was young: If we are nature’s, these are ours; this thorn Doth to our rose of youth rightly belong: Our blood to us, this to our blood is born; It is the show and seal of nature’s truth, Where love’s strong passion is impress’d in youth: By our remembrances of days foregone, Such were our faults; — or then we thought them none. Her eye is sick on’t: I observe her now."

"My friends were poor, but honest."

"The spirit of my father, which I think is within me, begins to mutiny against this servitude."

"The courtesy of nations allows you my better, in that you are the first-born; but the same tradition takes not away my blood, were there twenty brothers betwixt us: I have as much of my father in me as you."

"The spirit of my father grows strong in me."

"Give me the poor allottery my father left me by testament; with that I will go buy my fortunes."

"I no further offend you than becomes me for my good."

"Now will I stir this gamester."

"I hope I shall see an end of him; for my soul, yet I know not why, hates nothing more than he."

"Yet he’s gentle; never schooled, and yet learned; full of noble device; of all sorts enchantingly beloved; and indeed so much in the heart of the world, and especially of my own people, who best know him, that I am altogether misprised."

"This wrestler shall clear all: nothing remains but that I kindle the boy thither."

"I show more mirth than I am mistress of; and would you yet I were merrier? Unless you could teach me to forget a banished father, you must not learn me how to remember any extraordinary pleasure."

"I will forget the condition of my estate, to rejoice in yours."

"Celia: Let us sit and mock the good housewife Fortune from her wheel, that her gifts may henceforth be bestowed equally. Rosalind: I would we could do so; for her benefits are mightily misplaced; and the bountiful blind woman doth most mistake in her gifts to women. Celia: ’Tis true; for those that she makes fair she scarce makes honest; and those that she makes honest she makes very ill-favouredly. Rosalind: Nay, now thou goest from Fortune’s office to Nature’s: Fortune reigns in gifts of the world, not in the lineaments of Nature."

"How now, wit! whither wander you?"

"The more pity, that fools may not speak wisely what wise men do foolishly."

"Since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show."

"Celia: Here comes Monsieur Le Beau. Rosalind: With his mouth full of news. Celia: Which he will put on us, as pigeons feed their young. Rosalind: Then shall we be news-crammed."

"Well said: that was laid on with a trowel."

"Celia: Young gentleman, your spirits are too bold for your years. You have seen cruel proof of this man’s strength: if you saw yourself with your eyes, or knew yourself with your judgement, the fear of your adventure would counsel you to a more equal enterprise. We pray you, for your own sake, to embrace your own safety, and give over this attempt. Rosalind: Do, young sir; your reputation shall not therefore be misprised: we will make it our suit to the Duke that the wrestling might not go forward. Orlando: I beseech you, punish me not with your hard thoughts; wherein I confess me much guilty, to deny so fair and excellent ladies any thing. But let your fair eyes and gentle wishes go with me to my trial: wherein if I be foiled, there is but one shamed that was never gracious; if killed, but one dead that is willing to be so: I shall do my friends no wrong, for I have none to lament me, the world no injury, for in it I have nothing; only in the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty. Rosalind: The little strength that I have, I would it were with you."

"Your heart’s desires be with you!"

"If I had a thunderbolt in mine eye, I can tell who should down."