1984 Important Quotes:
Directions: Determine who said the following quote and what the significance the quote has to the themes presented
in the novel. Think about these thematic ideas to guide your themes: Control , language control as mind control,
dangers of totalitarianism, technology, control and manipulation of historical perceptions, propaganda, individuality,
love/sex, music and creativity, loyalty, language, history etc
1.war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is strength
2.Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
3.In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was
inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the
validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
4.And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have
improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could
exist, any standard against which it could be tested.
5.And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and
didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way
of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You
don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.
6. "The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was
impossible to avoid joining in."
7. "Whether he went on with the diary, or whether he did not go on with it, made no difference. The Thought Police
would get him just the same."
8."Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they can not become
conscious."
9. "And when memory failed and written records were falsified when that happened, the claim of the Party to have
improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could
exist, any standard against which it could be tested." -Book 1, Ch. VIII
10. "It's a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but
there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms.
After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains
its opposite in itself. 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. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be
nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality,
only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course," he added as an
afterthought.