BY Table of Contents
1984 quotes are everywhere, and for good reason. George Orwell saw through the illusions of power, exposing how control, manipulation, and censorship shape society.
Reading 1984 today, it’s impossible to ignore the parallels. Doublethink trades liberty for security, thoughtcrime silences dissent, and the memory hole erases inconvenient truths.
Orwell’s warnings remain as relevant as ever.
In this compilation, I’ve gathered some of the most powerful Orwell quotes that challenge, provoke, and demand reflection.
On Power and Oppression
“You are a difficult case. But don’t give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.” – George Orwell
“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
“Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” – George Orwell
“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.” – George Orwell
“‘Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past,’ repeated Winston obediently.” – George Orwell
“There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party.
There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother.
There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy.
There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science.
There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness.
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.
All competing pleasures will be destroyed.
But always – do not forget this, Winston – always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler.” – George Orwell
“At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration.” – George Orwell
“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.” – George Orwell
“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” – George Orwell
“What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself; who gives your arguments a fair hearing and simply persists in his lunacy?” – George Orwell
On War and Struggle
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength” – George Orwell
Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. – George Orwell
The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything. – George Orwell
About Truth and Politics
“If the facts say otherwise, the facts must be altered.” – George Orwell
“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself” – George Orwell
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” – George Orwell
About Manipulation
“You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.” – George Orwell
“When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you.” – George Orwell
“To keep them in control was not difficult. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.” – George Orwell
“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.” – George Orwell
About Surveillance
“Big Brother is watching you” – George Orwell
“In the far distance a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with a curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people’s windows.” – George Orwell
“The poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move.” – George Orwell
“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
Insights from Animal Farm
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” – George Orwell
“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike.
No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.” – George Orwell
“Man is the only real enemy we have. Remove Man from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever.” – George Orwell
“No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal.
He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves.
But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?” – George Orwell
“All that year the animals worked like slaves.
But they were happy in their work; they grudged no effort or sacrifice, well aware that everything that they did was for the benefit of themselves and those of their kind who would come after them, and not for a pack of idle, thieving human beings.” – George Orwell
Other Related Orwell Quotes
“There are occasions when it pays better to fight and be beaten than not to fight at all.” – Homage to Catalonia
“This is the inevitable fate of the sentimentalist. All his opinions change into their opposites at the first brush of reality.” – The Road to Wigan Pier
“Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret conviction that nothing can be changed.” – The Road to Wigan Pier
“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” – The Road to Wigan Pier
“To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself.” – Looking Back on the Spanish War
“Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.“– Politics and the English Language
“To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.
One thing that helps toward it is to keep a diary, or, at any rate, to keep some kind of record of one’s opinions about important events.
Otherwise, when some particularly absurd belief is exploded by events, one may simply forget that one ever held it.” – In Front of Your Nose
“We are living in a world in which nobody is free, in which hardly anybody is secure, in which it is almost impossible to be honest and to remain alive.” – The Road to Wigan Pier
“Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.” – Review of A Coat of Many Colours: Occasional Essays for Poetry Quarterly, 1945
Sources
- 1984 by George Orwell | Google Books
- Nineteen Eighty-four by George Orwell | Google Books
- Freedom: An Introduction with Readings by Nigel Warburton | Google Books
- 1984 The Telescreens Quotes | Spark Notes
- The Complete Works of George Orwell
- Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell
- The George Orwell Collection Illustrated | Google Books