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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.’

The party’s skillful but devious manipulation of information and history is a recurring theme in 1984. Here, in Book One, Chapter 3, we see the slogan at the center of that effort (“Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”) used for the first of the multiple times it will be evoked in the novel. Read more about this quote, the key slogan, and the theme it represents in Quotes by Theme: Control of Information and History (the first quote).

In the Party histories, of course, Big Brother figured as the leader and guardian of the Revolution since its very earliest days. His exploits had been gradually pushed backwards in time until already they extended into the fabulous world of the forties and the thirties.

This quote from Book One, Chapter 3 delves a bit further into the mysterious figure of Big Brother, who may or may not have started out as a person, but who by the year 1984 is almost entirely a fabrication and a symbol. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Big Brother (the second quote).

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