Quotes About Uncertainty

Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be.

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one... He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, a lunatic. But the though of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the horror was that he might also be wrong.

Not a word of it could ever be proved or disproved.

He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. 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 for ever?

And it was exactly at this moment that the significant thing happened -if, indeed, it did happen.

Either the future would resemble the present, in which case it would not listen to him: or it would be different from it, and his predicament would be meaningless.

Is it gone for ever? I'm not certain. But I tell you it was a good world to live in. I belong to it. So do you.

Prestige, the breath of life, is itself nebulous.

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?

They lived at the end of an epoch, when everything was dissolving into a sort of ghastly flux, and they didn't know it. They thought it was eternity. You couldn't blame them. That was what it felt like.

If you made a list of Hilda's remarks throughout the day, you'd find three bracketed together at the top—'We can't afford it', 'It's a great saving', and 'I don't know where the money's to come from'.

It was queer to think that less than three minutes earlier I'd been in the devil of a stew, with actual cold sweat on my backbone, at the thought that she might be dead.

You understand, that you will be fighting in the dark. You will always be in the dark.

Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.

Even when there was no doubt about the invitation he always half expected that there would be some hitch or other. He was never quite certain of his welcome.

Gelecekten o kadar korkuyoruz ki bir tavÅŸan gibi doÄŸruca boa y?lan?n?n g?rtla??ndan içeri atl?yoruz.

heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had

He was not certain that he would use the razor blade even if he got the chance. It was more natural to exist from moment to moment, accepting another ten minutes' life even with the certainty that there was torture at the end of it.

We may be together for another six months -a year- there's no knowing. At the end we're certain to be apart. Do you realise how utterly alone we shall be? When once they get hold of us there will be nothing, literally nothing, that either of us can do for the other.

Newspeak, doublethink, the mutability of the past. He felt as though he were wandering in the forests of the sea bottom, lost in a monstrous world where he himself was the monster. He was alone. The past was dead, the future was unimaginable. What certainty had he that a single human creature now living was on his side?

Some said that he died with tears on his cheeks, his last words being the uncharacteristically hesitant, "I am perplexed." Others thought that his final utterance was the melancholic admission, "Sometimes I hate myself." His

The trouble you're expecting never happens; it's always something that sneaks up the other way.

In spite of the advice of my father, I did hesitate.

Weak people live in perpetual fear and foreboding.