Important Quotations Explained
1. war
is peacefreedom is
slaveryignorance is
strength
2. Who
controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present
controls the past.
3. 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.
4. And
when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that
happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions
of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist,
and never again could exist, any standard against which it could
be tested.
5. And
perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick
and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean
it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean
it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself and you're
quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to
the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you
care about is yourself.
