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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 this first passage from Emmanuel Goldstein’s seditious “The Theory and Practices of Oligarchical Collectivism” manifesto that Winston reads from to his great delight in Book Two, Chapter 9, Goldstein explains that the Party makes the lives of proles miserable precisely so they are kept too busy just getting by to have time to realize that they could live better lives if they upset the status quo of the Party order. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Goldstein (the first quote).

The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought
 

This second excerpt from Goldstein’s manifesto in Book Two, Chapter 9, states that the Party’s plan for absolute control of society is to vanquish all foreign foes by means of force and then to destroy the spirit and beliefs of all the people on earth by means of psychological manipulation. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Goldstein (the second quote).

The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already.

This famous quote is a thought that Winston while reflecting on Goldstein’s manifesto, which he reads and agrees with completely in Book Two, Chapter 9. The statement is remembered today as one of Orwell’s most famous and most discussed quotes. Many have stated that Orwell is telling us (through Winston) that books that agree with what we already believed or suspected to be true before we read them have more impact than books about topics that are unknown to us since they empower us by essentially confirming to us that we were correct. 

From below came the familiar sound of singing and the scrape of boots on the flagstones. The brawny, red-armed woman whom Winston had seen there on his first visit was almost a fixture in the yard. There seemed to be no hour of daylight when she was not marching to and fro between the washtub and the line, alternately gagging herself with clothes pegs and breaking forth into lusty song.

As if on cue, the prole woman—whose songs evoke longing for the vanished past as well as hopes for a better future in Winston—begins to sing again in the background while Winston and Julia have an assignation in the room above Mr. Charrington’s shop in Book Two, Chapter 9. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Symbol: The Red-Armed Prole Woman (the third quote).

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. Nobody has ever seen Big Brother. He is a face on the hoardings, a voice on the telescreen. We may be reasonably sure that he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty as to when he was born. Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world.

In this excerpt from Goldstein’s manifesto that Winston reads in in Book Two, Chapter 9, Goldstein delves into the power and the mystery of Big Brother. Read more about this quote in Quotes by Character: Goldstein (the third quote).

All beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the Party and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived.

This excerpt from Goldstein’s manifesto describes the all-inclusiveness of the Party’s control, as is discussed in the explanation for this quote in Quotes by Character: Goldstein (the third quote). The explanation for this quote in Quotes by Theme: The Impact of Totalitarianism (the fifth quote) points out that the manifesto reveals many dark details about the Party’s psychological manipulation of its citizens to Winston. 

[T]he Party member, like the proletarian, tolerates present-day conditions because he has no standards of comparison. He must be cut off from the past, just as he must be cut off from foreign countries, because it is necessary for him to believe that he is better off than his ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is constantly rising.

In this, the final excerpt from Goldstein’s manifesto that Winston reads in Book Two, Chapter 9 focuses on the motivation behind the Party’s strict control of information, history, and personal memories. The explanation for this quote in Quotes by Character: Goldstein (the fourth quote) summarizes Goldstein argument, while the explanation in Quotes by Theme: The Control of Information and History (the fifth quote) links it to the Party slogan “Who controls the past controls the future” from Book One, Chapter 3.

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