Quotes About Totalitarianism

The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within half a kilometre of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards

It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. (...) 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. (...) 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?

We are not interested in those stupid crimes you have committed. The Party is not interested in the overt act: the thought is all we care about.

a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting—three hundred million people all with the same face.

Si quieres hacerte una idea de cómo será el futuro, figúrate una bota aplastando un rostro humano... incesantemente.

What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side? And what way of knowing that the dominion of the Party would not endure forever?

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it[...]Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?

But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

Perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible because there will be no words in which to express it.

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.

In a Party member, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.

Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation and orgiastic triumph.

Does Big Brother exist? - Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party. - Does he exist in the same way as I exist? - You do not exist.

Everything's streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler's keeping for you.

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been re-painted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don't let it happen. It depends on you.

Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?.... In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.

Bad news coming, thought Winston. And sure enough, following on a gory description of the annihilation of a Eurasian army, with stupendous figures of killed and prisoners, came the announcement that, as from next week, the chocolate ration would be reduced from thirty grams to twenty.

Thoughts and actions which, when detected, mean certain death are not formally forbidden, and the endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments and vaporisations are not inflicted as punishment for crimes which have actually been committed, but are merely the wiping-out of persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future.

Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped. Nothing exists except in an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Todos los que sostienen esa postura no se dan cuenta de que, al apoyar los métodos totalitarios, llegará un momento en que esos métodos serán usados contra ellos y no por ellos. Haced una costumbre del encarcelamiento de fascistas sin juicio previo y tal vez este proceso no se limite solo a los fascistas.

You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?

In un regime la memoria è colpa.