Quotes from George Orwell, 1984

Has it ever occurred to you, ' he said, 'that the whole history of English poetry has been de-termined by the fact that the English language lacks rhymes?

Today there were fear, hatred, and pain, but no dignity of emotion, no deep or complex sorrows.

and then the chosen lie would pass into the permanent records and become truth

We are the dead . Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone.

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

Winston Smith: Does Big Brother exist?O'Brien: Of course he exists.Winston Smith: Does he exist like you or me?O'Brien: You do not exist.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

That is her style of beauty.

She's beautiful, ' he murmured.'She's a metre across the hips, easily, ' said Julia.'That is her style of beauty, ' said Winston.

If one is to rule, and to continue ruling, one must be able to dislocate the sense of reality.

In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards.

It struck him that the true characteristic thing about modern life was not its cruelty and insecurity, but simply its bareness, its dinginess, its listlessness.

Sooner or later it would happen: strength would change into consciousness.

So long as human beings stay human, death and life are the same thing.

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear.

The words kept coming back to him, statement of a mystical truth and a palpable absurdity.

If all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.

The actual writing would be easy. All he had to do was to transfer to paper the interminable restless monologue that had been running inside his head, literally for years.

I have not betrayed Julia.

And after that, you don't feel the same toward the other person any longer.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.