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. “Big Brother is watching you.”
4. “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
5. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power.”
6. “Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death.”
7. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
8. “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”
9. “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
10. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”
11. “If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them.”
12. “Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
13. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
14. “Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
15. “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.”
16. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
17. “Until they become conscious, they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious.”
18. “We do not merely destroy our enemies, we change them.”
19. “To die hating them, that was freedom.”
20. “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
21. “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.”
22. “The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”
Summary of Nineteen Eighty-Four:
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell, first published in 1949. The story is set in a totalitarian society ruled by the Party, led by the enigmatic figure of Big Brother. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a low-ranking member of the Party who becomes disillusioned with its regime and begins to rebel against it.
The novel portrays a world in which every aspect of human life is controlled by the Party, from language and history to individual thoughts and emotions. Winston’s attempts to resist this control lead him into a dangerous world of underground rebellion, secret meetings, and forbidden love.
As Winston’s rebellion gathers momentum, he comes into contact with other dissidents who are also fighting against the Party’s brutal regime. However, their efforts are ultimately in vain as the Party’s all-encompassing surveillance and manipulation techniques prove too powerful to overcome.
The novel concludes with Winston’s capture and torture by the Party, in which his sense of self is ultimately destroyed and he comes to accept the Party’s version of reality. The novel’s themes of totalitarianism, surveillance, and the manipulation of language have made it a classic of dystopian literature and a warning against the dangers of authoritarianism.