1984 Key Quotes

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU" - Written almost everywhere around you so that you will not forget that you are under constant surveillance.

"DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER" - Winston writes this in his diary without even realising he has been doing it over and over again. 

"The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in." - Can't help doing what the Party tells you to do. 

"The Ministry of Truth, which concerned himself with news, entertainment, education and the fine arts. The Ministry of Peace, which concerned itself with war. The Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order. And the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. - Oxymorons because everything is the opposite and a lie in this totalitarian state. 

"WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH" - Slogan of the Party. Complete and utter contradictions and oxymorons. 

"If all records told the same tale - then the lie passed into history and became truth." - Past being rewritten to get rid of anything seen as unorthodox. 

"He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." - The Party can even change the past they are so controlling.

"Doubleplusungood" - Example of newspeak. Trying to belittle the English language and condense it to less words that make no sense.

"If there is hope ... it lies in the proles." - Winston believes that the Proles (the lowest group in society but also the biggest) would be able to rebel against the Party because they are not under surveillance. They are a major threat even though the Party does not see them as one. 

"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows." - Winston saying that they should have the right to believe what they want and not be told what and how to think. 

"Not merely the love of one person, but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces." - Saying that free will is what would destroy the Party once and for all. 

"She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring war on the Party it was better to think of yourself as a corpse. 'We are the dead,' he said." - Describing how everyone has lost the will to live. 

"'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told her." - Winston telling Julia that them having sex is rebellious against the Party. 

"It's the one thing they can't do. They can make you say anything - anything - but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you." - Talking about how no one - not even the Party - can take away your independence. 

"You will work for a while, you will be caught, you will confess, and then you will die... There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead." - Brief description of life in the totalitarian state. 

"There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." - Saying how to survive. 

"everywhere stood the same solid unconquerable figure, made monstrous by work and childbearing, toiling from birth to death and still singing." - Big Brother being with you from birth until death in this society. 

"All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers." - Reference back to Hitler and Stalin and their ideologies in their similar societies, Aryan race etc. 

"Sanity is not statistical." - Saying you don't have to be smart to be sane. 

"The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation." - Paradox to what Winston is supposed to believe. Realising that the Party are liars! 

Some quotes obtained from the book that Emmanuel Goldstein wrote that Winston was reading once he and Julia had joined the "Brotherhood" that does not actually exist. It just coaxes out any people who may be opposed to the Party and vaporizes them.

"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." - Negative impact of the Party's propaganda and expectations on Winston's thinking. 

"There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were still clean." - Description of what happens in the Ministry of Love and Room 101.

"We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull." - What O'Brien says whilst torturing Winston.

"The command of the old despotisms was Thou Shalt Not. The command of the totalitarians was Thou Shalt. Out command is Thou Art." - Trying to compare their beliefs to the instructions shown in the Bible.  

"It was like swimming against a current that swept you backwards however hard you struggled, and then suddenly deciding to turn round and go with the current instead of opposing it. Nothing had changed except your own attitude;" - Winston's belief about what eventually happens to you after living in the same way for too long. 

"For the first time he perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself." - Winston thinking that it is impossible to keep something for everyone. 

"To die hating them, that was freedom." - Winston's idea of true freedom. 

"You asked me once," said O'Brien, "what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world." - Intimidating description of Room 101. 

"Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don't care what you do to her. Tear her face off, ***** her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!" - Winston finally giving up in Room 101 because of the rats.

"But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother." - What happened to Winston at the end of the book. The Party finally won :(