Quotes About Deception

One prod to the nerve of nationalism and the intellectual decencies can vanish, the past can be altered, and the plainest facts can be denied.

It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grammes a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grammes a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.

The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist.

The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated.

The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

I betrayed you,' she said baldly. 'I betrayed you,' he said.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth.

Goldstein was delivering his usual venomous attack upon the doctrines of the Party—an attack so exaggerated and perverse that a child should have been able to see through it, and yet just plausible enough to fill one with an alarmed feeling that other people, less level-headed than oneself, might be taken in by it.

The fat Russian agent was cornering all the foreign refugees in turn and explaining plausibly that this whole affair was an Anarchist plot. I watched him with some interest, for it was the first time that I had seen a person whose profession was telling lies—unless one counts journalists.

it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His

Se volessi» aveva detto O'Brien, «potrei sollevarmi da questo pavimento come una bolla di sapone.» Winston sviluppò e risolse il senso di quest'affermazione: Se lui pensa di potersi sollevare in volo e contemporaneamente io penso di vederglielo fare, allora questa cosa accade. D'un tratto, come un rottame sommerso che emerge dall'acqua, gli affiorò alla mente questo pensiero: Ma non accade veramente, siamo noi che l'immaginiamo. È un'allucinazione.

War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Ocea- nia never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate.

In England, where the Press is more centralized and the public more easily deceived than elsewhere, only two versions of the Spanish war have had any publicity to speak of: the Right-wing version of Christian patriots versus Bolsheviks dripping with blood, and the Left-wing version of gentlemanly republicans quelling a military revolt. The central issue has been successfully covered up.

She did not feel the abyss opening beneath her feet at the thought of lies becoming truths.

if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.

to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

De certa maneira, era como se a granja tivesse ficado rica sem que nenhum animal houvesse enriquecido — exceto, é claro, os porcos e os cachorros.

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

Dodici voci si alzarono furiose, e tutte erano simili. Non c'era da chiedersi ora che cosa fosse successo al viso dei maiali. Le creature di fuori guardavano dal maiale all'uomo, dall'uomo al maiale e ancora dal maiale all'uomo, ma già era loro impossibile distinguere fra i due.

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.

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even

Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.