NINETEEN EIGHTY FOUR
by George Orwell
Chapter 3
Page 31
The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with
Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance
with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that
knowledge exist? Only in his known consciousness, which in any case
must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the
Party imposed, if all records told the same tale, then the lie passed
into history and became truth. "Who controls the past," ran the Party
slogan, "controls the future: who controls the present controls the
past." And yet the past, though its nature alterable, never had been
altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to
everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending
series of victories over your own memory. "Reality control," they
called it: in Newspeak, "double-think."
Winston's mind slid away into the labyrinth world of double-
think. To know and not to know, to be conscious or complete
truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold
simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be
contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against
logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that
democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of
democracy; to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw
it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then
promptly to forget it again; and above all, to apply the same process
to the process itself. That was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to
induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of
the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the
world "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.
Chapter 4
Page 37
And somewhere or other, quite anonymous, there were the directing
brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of
policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should
be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of
existence.
Page 39
Very likely, as many as a dozen people were now working away on
rival versions of what Big Brother had actually said. And presently,
some master brain in the Inner Party would select this version or
that, would re-edit it and set in motion the complex processes of
cross-referencing that would be required, and then the chosen lie
would pass into the permanent records and become truth.
Chapter 5
Page 46
Orthodoxy means not thinking - not needing to think. Orthodoxy is
unconsciousness.
Page 47
It was not the man's brain that was speaking, it was his larynx.
The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not
speech in the true sense: it made a noise uttered in unconsciousness,
like the quacking of a duck.
Chapter 7
Page 59
"If there is hope," wrote Winston, "it lies in the proles." If
there was proles, it must lie in the proles because only there, in
those swarming disregarded masses, could the force to destroy the
Party ever be generated.
Page 60
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until
after they have rebelled, they cannot become conscious. The Party
claimed to have liberated the proles from bondage. Before the
Revolution, they had been hideously oppressed by the capitalists, they
had been starved and flogged.
Page 61
And even when they became discontented, their discontent led
nowhere because being without general ideas, they could only focus on
petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their
notice.
In a children's history textbook: "In among all this terrible
poverty there were just a few great big beautiful houses that were
lived in by rich men who had as many as thirty servants to look after
them. These rich men were called capitalists. They were fat, ugly men
with wicked faces dressed in a long black coat and a queer shiny hat
shaped like a stovepipe which was called a top hat. This was the
uniform of the capitalists and no one else was allowed to wear it. The
capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their
slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and
all the money. If anyone disobeyed them they could throw them into
prison or they could take his job away and starve him to death."
How could you tell how much of it was lies? It might be true that
the average human was better off.
Page 67
The past not only changed but changed continuously. "I understand
HOW: I do not understand WHY.
It was as though some huge force were pressing down upon you -
something that penetrated inside your skull, battering against your
brain, frightening you out of your beliefs, persuading you, almost, to
deny the evidence of your senses. In the end, the party would announce
that two plus two made five and you would have to believe it.
Page 68
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears.
It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he
thought of the enormous power arrayed against him. "Freedom is the
freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all
else follows."
Chapter 8
Page 72
It was probable that there were some millions of Proles for whom
the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining
alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne,their
intellectual stimulant. Winston knew that the the winners of the big
prizes being to non-existent persons.
Page 76
What I am asking is, were these people able to treat you as an
inferior simply because they were rich and you were poor?
PART TWO
Chapter 5
Page 127
I know that the past is falsified but it would never be possible
for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After
the thing is done, no evidence ever remains.
Chapter 9
THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by Emmanuel Goldstein
Chapter III: War is peace
The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was
an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of
the 20th century. With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the
British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers,
Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third,
Eastasia, only emerged after another decade of confused fighting.
In one combination or another, these three super-states are
permanently at war and have been so for the past 25 years. War,
however, is no longer the desperate annihilating struggle that it was
in the early decades. It is a warfare of limited aims between
combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material
cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological
difference. That is not to say that the either the conduct of the war
has become less bloodthirsty. On the contrary, war hysteria is
continuous and universal in all countries and such acts as raping,
looting, slaughter of children are looked upon as normal, and when
they are committed by one's own side and not the enemy, meritorious.
But in a physical sense, war involves very small numbers of
people, mostly highly-trained specialists. The fighting takes place on
vague frontiers. In the centers of civilization, war means no more
than a continuous shortage of consumption goods and an occasional
crash of a rocket bomb and a few deaths. War has changed its
character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have
changed in their order of importance.
To understand the nature of the present war, one must realize
that it is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three super-
states could be definitely conquered even by the other two in
combination. They are too evenly matched.
Page 152
With the establishment of self-contained economies, in which
production and consumption are geared to one another, the scramble for
markets which was a main cause of previous wars has come to an end
while the competition for raw materials is no longer a matter of life
and death.
Page 153
The primary aim of modern warfare in accordance with the
principles of doublethink is to use up the products of the machine
without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of
the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of
consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At
present,when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is
not urgent and it might not have to become so even if no artificial
processes of destruction had been at work.
From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was
clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery and
therefor to a great extent, for human inequality, had disappeared. If
the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork,
dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few
generations. And in fact, by producing wealth which it was sometimes
impossible not to distribute, the machine did raise the living
standards of the average human being.
Page 154
But it was also very clear that an all-round increase in wealth
threatened the destruction of hierarchical society. If it once became
general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible to
imagine a society in which wealth should be evenly distributed while
power remained in the hands of a small privileged class. But in
practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure
and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings
who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would
learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they
would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no
function and they would sweep it away. IN the long run, a hierarchical
society was only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the the masses in
poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great
extent between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was
allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment
was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented
from working and kept half alive by State charity.
The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning
without increasing the wealth of the world. Goods must be produced but
they must not be distributed. And in practice, the only way of
achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human
lives, but of the products of human labor. War is a way of shattering
to pieces materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses
too comfortable and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.
Page 155
Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their
manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labor power without
producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress has
locked up in it the labor that would build several hundred cargo-
ships. In principle, the war effort is always so planned as to eat up
any surplus that might exist after the bare needs of the population.
In practice, the needs of the population are always under-estimated
with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the
necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is
deliberate policy to keep even the favored groups somewhere near the
brink of hardship,because a general state of scarcity increase the
importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction
between one group and another. The social atmosphere is that of a
besieged city where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the
difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time, the
consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the
handing over of all power to a small caste seem the natural,
unavoidable condition of survival.
War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary
destruction but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way.
In principle, it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of
the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and
filling them up again, or even producing vast quantities of goods and
then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic
and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society.
Page 159
Actually, all three philosophies are barely distinguishable and
the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all.
Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of
a 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. On the
contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up.
The ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and
unaware of what they are doing. Their lives are dedicated to world
conquest but they also know that war must continue without victory.
Meanwhile, the fact there is no danger of conquest makes possible the
denial of reality. By becoming continuous, war has fundamentally
changed its character.
In past ages, war, almost by definition, was something that
sooner or later came to an end in victory or defeat.
Chapter I: Ignorance is strength
Through recorded time and probably since the end of the Neolithic
Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High,the
Middle and the Low. The essential structure of society has never
altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable
changes, the same pattern has always re-asserted itself just as a
gyroscope always returns to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one
way or the other.
The aims of these groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of
the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the middle is to
change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an
aim, for the abiding characteristic of the Low is 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 where all shall be equal. Of the three groups, only
the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims.
From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant
much more than a change in the name of their masters.
Page 163
The need for a hierarchical form of society has been preached by
kings and aristocrats and by the priests, lawyers and the like who
were parasitical upon them,and it had generally been softened by
promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave.
Page 164
At the beginning of the 20th century, human equality had become
technically possible. It was still true that men were not equal in
native talents but there was no longer any real need for class
distinctions or for large differences in wealth. But by the fourth
decade, all the main currents of political thought were authoritarian.
The earthly paradise had been discredited at exactly the moment when
it became realizable.
Page 166
The masses never revolt merely because they are oppressed.
Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of
comparison,they ever even become aware that they are oppressed. The
recurrent economic crises of past times were totally unnecessary and
are now not permitted to happen.
Page 170
The ability to believe that black is white and more, to know that
black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary
demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the
system of thought known in Newspeak as doublethink.
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs
in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them, to tell
deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact
that has become inconvenient and then, when it becomes necessary
again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is
needed,to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to
take account of the reality which one denies, all this is
indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink,it is
necessary to exercise doublethink.
Page 172
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. These contradictions are not accidental nor
do they result from ordinary hypocrisy:they are deliberate exercises
in doublethink. For it is only be reconciling contradictions that
power can be retained indefinitely. If human equality is to be forever
averted, if the High are to keep their places permanently, then the
prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
But there is one question which until this moment we have
ignored. It is: why should human equality be averted? What is the
motive for this huge planned effort to freeze history at a particular
moment in time?
Page 173
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you
mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to truth
even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Page 215
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face, forever.
Page 224
He trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the
arguments that contradicted them. It was not easy. It needed great
powers of reasoning and improvisation. It needed also a sort of
athleticism of mind, an ability at one moment to make the most
delicate use of logic and at the next to be unconscious of the crudest
logical errors. Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as
difficult to attain.
Appendix:
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of
expression but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was
intended that when Newspeak had been adopted and and for all, a
heretical thought should be literally unthinkable. Quite apart from
the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary
was regarded as an end in itself and no word that could be dispensed
with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but
to diminish the range of thought and this purpose was indirectly
assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.
Goodthink meant orthodoxy.
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