1984 Thought Police Quotes

With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 3. Winston dreams about the ‘Golden Country’ where a dark-haired woman comes from across the field, and with one movement, flings off her clothes in a disdainful gesture. He is overwhelmed with admiration for the gesture.

The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed – would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper – the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 1. When Winston Smith sets out to challenge the Party’s power, he discovers the real extend of its ability to control and enslave people . In this society thoughts are not free.

It seemed to him that he knew exactly what it felt like to sit in a room like this, in an armchair beside an open fire with your feet in the fender and a kettle on the hob: utterly alone, utterly secure, with nobody watching you, no voice pursuing you, no sound except the singing of the kettle and the friendly ticking of the clock.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 8. Winston’s feelings in the cozy, old-fashioned room above junk-shop in prole quarters, belonging to Mr. Charrington. But it is all a lie, as is in a property ofa member of the Thought Police and under surveillance from a hidden telescreen.

We believe that there is some kind of conspiracy, some kind of secret organization working against the Party, and that you are involved in it. We want to join it and work for it. We are enemies of the Party. We disbelieve in the principles of Ingsoc. We are thought-criminals. We are also adulterers. I tell you this because we want to put ourselves at your mercy. If you want us to incriminate ourselves in any other way, we are ready.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 8. Winston to O’Brien, when he and Julia are invited to O’Brien’s apartment. The couple declare their opposition to the Party and try to join the rebel Brotherhood, wrongly believing O’Brien to be a member of it. O’Brien is actually an agent for the Thought Police.

We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police there is no other way.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 8. O’Brien is speaking here to Winston and Julia on the occasion of their visit to his home. He is describing the Brotherhood, a resistence group, which he is pretending to be a member of.
Close