Nineteen Eighty-Four - notes and highlights
Metadata
Author: George Orwell
Highlights
WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH — location: 234 ^ref-4604
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER — location: 265 ^ref-50068
Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed for ever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you. — location: 272 ^ref-48728
He began writing in a hurried untidy scrawl: theyll shoot me i don’t care theyll shoot me in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother they always shoot you in the back of the neck i dont care down with big brother —— — location: 277 ^ref-60820
testimony before vanishing, this time for ever. Withers, however, was already an UNPERSON. He did not exist: he had never existed. — location: 638 ^ref-13701
Withers, however, was already an UNPERSON. He did not exist: he had never existed. — location: 639 ^ref-11955
Was he, then, ALONE in the possession of a memory? — location: 821 ^ref-28635
Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, — location: 986 ^ref-59791
I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY. — location: 1103 ^ref-54883
He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. — location: 1104 ^ref-10561
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. — location: 1123 ^ref-6823
It was at night that they came for you, always at night. The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you. — location: 1416 ^ref-14279
But it needed desperate courage to kill yourself in a world where firearms, or any quick and certain poison, were completely unprocurable. — location: 1417 ^ref-23647
i mean you have razor blades and things to hang...
I LOVE YOU. — location: 1482 ^ref-40941
Almost as swiftly as he had imagined it, she had torn her clothes off, and when she flung them aside it was with that same magnificent gesture by which a whole civilization seemed to be annihilated. — location: 1717 ^ref-64253
‘Listen. The more men you’ve had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?’ ‘Yes, perfectly.’ ‘I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.’ ‘Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I’m corrupt to the bones.’ ‘You like doing this? I don’t mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?’ ‘I adore it.’ — location: 1727 ^ref-56025
Their embrace had been a battle, the climax a victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act. — location: 1742 ^ref-37394
‘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.’ — location: 2299 ^ref-57542
In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, — location: 2718 ^ref-52318
A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This — although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense — is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE. — location: 2760 ^ref-46577
The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim — for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives — is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. — location: 2786 ^ref-9223
even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. — location: 2990 ^ref-21820
The solid, contourless body, like a block of granite, and the rasping red skin, bore the same relation to the body of a girl as the rose-hip to the rose. Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower? — location: 3036 ^ref-25020
‘We are the dead,’ he said. ‘We are the dead,’ echoed Julia dutifully. ‘You are the dead,’ said an iron voice behind them. — location: 3062 ^ref-42542
He loved her and would not betray her; but that was only a fact, known as he knew the rules of arithmetic. He felt no love for her, and he hardly even wondered what was happening to her. — location: 3164 ^ref-33112
He thought: ‘If I could save Julia by doubling my own pain, would I do it? Yes, I would.’ But that was merely an intellectual decision, taken because he knew that he ought to take it. He did not feel it. In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain. — location: 3297 ^ref-16374
‘Does Big Brother exist?’ ‘Of course he exists. The Party exists. Big Brother is the embodiment of the Party.’ ‘Does he exist in the same way as I exist?’ ‘You do not exist,’ said O’Brien. — location: 3589 ^ref-1858
‘It might be a long time,’ said O’Brien. ‘You are a difficult case. But don’t give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you.’ — location: 3798 ^ref-49612
Merely to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying. — location: 3818 ^ref-19079
‘Room 101,’ he said. — location: 3912 ^ref-373
and there was a long scar, partly hidden by the hair, across her forehead and temple; — location: 4037 ^ref-54891