Do you think the world is becoming more like the novel 1984?
These 1984 quotes by George Orwell are more significant than ever.
They either describe our direction or warn us about going down the wrong road.
1984 Quotes With Page Numbers
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
~ George Orwell, 1984, (the narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 1
“Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 2
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The three slogans of the party), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 4
“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 24
“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 25
“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 27
“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 28
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 4, Page 35
“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
~George Orwell, 1984, Part One, (Character: Syme to Winston), Part One, Chapter 5, Page 53
“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 6, Pages 63-64
“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Character: Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Julia to Winston), Part One, Chapter 3, Page 129
“‘You’re only a rebel from the waist downwards,’ he told her.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith to Julia), Part Two, Chapter 5, Page 156
“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Julia), Part 2, Chapter 7, Page 164
“Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith to Julia), Part Two. Chapter 7, Page 166
“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston Smith’s thoughts), Part Two, Chapter 8, Page 200
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 214
“There was truth and there was untruth, and i you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 217
“Sanity is not statistical.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part Two, Chapter 10, Page 218
“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 1, Page 239
“You are a slow learner, Winston.”
“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien and Winston Smith), Pages 250-251
“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston Smith), Part Three, Chapter Two, Page 259
“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 262
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 4, Page 277
“To die hating them, that was freedom.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part Three, Chapter 4, Page 281
Deep 1984 Quotes With Page Numbers
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 1
“Outside, even through the shut window pane, the world looked cold.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 2
“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 25
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 214
“In the face of pain there are no heroes.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 1, Page 239
“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston), Part Two, Chapter 7, Page 164
“Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston Smith’s thoughts), Part Two, Chapter 8, Page 200
“The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 262
“I enjoy talking to you. Your mind appeals to me. It resembles my own mind except that you happen to be insane.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston Smith), Part Three, Chapter Two, Page 259
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Character: Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn’t matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston to Julia), Part Two. Chapter 7, Page 166
“To die hating them, that was freedom.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston), Part Three, Chapter 4, Page 281
“Sanity is not statistical.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston), Part Two, Chapter 10, Page 218
“If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Character: Winston), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 80
“The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 28
“If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Julia), Part One, Chapter 3, Page 129
“Nearly all children nowadays were horrible. What was worst of all was that by means of such organizations as the Spies they were systematically turned into ungovernable little savages, and yet this produced in them no tendency whatever to rebel against the discipline of the Party. On the contrary, they adored the Party and everything connected with it… All their ferocity was turned outwards, against the enemies of the State, against foreigners, traitors, saboteurs, thought-criminals. It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 24
“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 27
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word ‘doublethink’ involved the use of doublethink.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 3, Page 35
“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 6, Pages 63-64
1984 Quotes About Propaganda With Page Numbers
“War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.”
~George Orwell, 1984, Part One, Chapter 1, Page 4
“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Syme to Winston), Part One, Chapter 5, Page 53
“You are a slow learner, Winston.”
“How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes? Two and two are four.”
“Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien and Winston), Pages 250-251
“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 217
“The past was alterable. The past never had been altered. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Three, Chapter 4, Page 277
1984 Quotes Individuality Quotes With Page Numbers
“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part Three, Chapter 2, Page 252
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part 3, Chapter 4, Page 281
“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.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 217
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 70
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part One. Chapter 7, Page 81
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 2, Page 249
“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The narrator about Winston Smith’s thoughts), Part one, Chapter 2, Page 27
“In a way, the world−view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part Two, Chapter 5, Page 156
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 7, Page 81
“To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone— to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone: From the age of uniformity, from the age of solitude, from the age of Big Brother, from the age of doublethink — greetings!”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part One, Chapter 2, Page 28
“Tragedy, he precieved, belonged to the ancient time, to a time when there were still privacy, love, and friendship, and when the members of a family stood by one another without needing to know the reason.”
~George Orwell, 1984, Part One, (The Narrator about Winston), Chapter 3, Page 30
1984 Quotes Power Quotes With Page Numbers
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (Winston), Part Three, Chapter 2, Page 248
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 267
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 266
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 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. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 263
“We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 2, Page 253
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 263
“The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?’
~George Orwell, 1984, (O’Brien to Winston), Part Three, Chapter 3, Page 263
“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 191
“It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same–everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same–people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 220
“May I see your papers, comrad?”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The patrols), Part One, Chapter 8, Page 83
“If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 3, Page 34
The government attracts the worst kinds of people, those who crave power. They use that power to gain more power through executive orders, mandates, wars, and emergency powers.
Governments rarely surrender the power you give them, even emergency powers. Always ask yourself, how could the government leverage this power against my family or me in the future?
Even if you support the current administration, what happens when they’re no longer in control? By giving up power to the government today, you are giving a blank check to a potential dictatorship in the future.
1984 Quotes Surveillance Quotes (Big Brother)
“BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (A sign with eyes that follow you), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 2
“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 3
“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 guess work. It was conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live–did live, from habit that became instinct–in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement was scrutinized.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 3
“By sitting in the alcove, and keeping well back, Winston was able to remain outside the range of the telescreen, so far as sight went. He could be heard, of course, but so long as he stayed in his present position he could not be seen.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 6
“The thing that he was about to do was to open a diary. This was not illegal (nothing was illegal, since there were no longer any laws), but if detected it was reasonably certain that it would be punished by death, or at least twenty-five years in a forced-labor camp.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part One, Chapter 1, Page 6
We are being watched more than we’d like to admit.
- online tracking
- cell phone tracking
- face recognition
- Alexa, Siri, and the internet of things
Governments always use the excuse of fighting terrorism but become addicted to the power.
1984 Censorship Quotes With Page Numbers
“It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”
~George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator about Winston’s thoughts), Part One, Chapter 5, Page 51
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the 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.”
~ George Orwell, 1984, (Winston Smith), Part Two, Chapter 5, Page 155
“The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”
~ George Orwell, 1984, (The Narrator), Part Two, Chapter 9, Page 207
Are social media companies allowing free speech? Do they allow open debate about the issues or censor one side? Who has been on the right side of history, those who censor one side of an argument or support free speech?
How does the cancel culture affect free speech, public debate, and idea generation?
Does banning a person or an idea make it go away? Or does it grow in the darkness of ignorance?
1984 Summary
1984 is a dystopian novel by George Orwell set in 1984 (the novel was written in 1949). It follows the main character, Winston Smith, a citizen of Oceania, a totalitarian state controlled by an omnipresent government known as the Party.
In the book, Winston engages in a forbidden love affair with Julia and grows increasingly hostile toward the Party’s oppressive regime. Rising against the government, Winston is under surveillance and eventually arrested by the Thought Police for thought crimes.
He is taken to the Ministry of Love for interrogation and torture to make him comply with the Party’s will. In the end, Winston is broken, and he comes to love Big Brother, the leader of the Party. The book paints an unsettling picture of a future under total government control and warns against the dangers of authoritarian rule.
Lessons from 1984 By George Orwell
The novel 1984 by George Orwell describes a dystopian world of war, surveillance, propaganda, and censorship. The elites and the ruling party lived like kings, and the people lived miserable, meaningless lives.
What does freedom have to do with health and wealth?
The freer the society, the greater the population’s wealth, health, and life expectancy.
But how can we survive in a world of out-of-control corporations and government overreach?
- Stop supporting the big government on the left or the right.
- Watch what politicians and the elites do, not what they say.
- Turn of the mainstream media
- Ask how this power could be used against us in the future.
What does 2 2 5 mean in 1984?
In George Orwell’s 1984, 2+2=5 is used as an example of doublethink, the act of holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously. It shows how the Party expects its citizens to believe whatever they are told, regardless of how absurd it may seem.
What page of 1984 is 2 2 5 in?
The quote is on page 80 of the book 1984 by George Orwell.
What are the four famous last words of the book 1984?
“There were also large quantities of merely utilitarian literature—indispensable technical manuals, and the like—that had to be treated in the same way. It was chiefly in order to allow time for the preliminary work of translation that the final adoption of Newspeak had been fixed for so late a date as 2050.” Page 312