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1984 Quotes

It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offence.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 5. Winston has a moment of fear as he realizes he is being watched.

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. Part 1, Chapter 7. The thoughts of Winston, who works for the Ministry of Truth, where he alters the historical record to match the Party’s propaganda. Welcome to the world of official deception, surveillance, and manipulation of history by a totalitarian state.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense.

– George Orwell

1984. Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston. Orwell got inspiration from a real event in Russia where the community party celebrated achieving a production goal in four years instead of five by announcing the workers had made 2+2=5.

Winston and Julia clung together, fascinated. The music went on and on, minute after minute, with astonishing variations, never once repeating itself, almost as though the bird were deliberately showing off its virtuosity. Sometimes it stopped for a few seconds, spread out and resettled its wings, then swelled its speckled breast and again burst into song. Winston watched it with a sort of vague reverence. For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness?

– George Orwell

1984. Part 2, Chapter 2. During their first secret meeting, Winston and Julia listen to the singing of a thrush which lands on a bough just metres from them. This symbolises how the thrush gets to live life as it chooses – ‘free as a bird’.
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