Quotes from the novel “1984” (George Orwell)

October 28, 2020History, Literature

The author of the famous novel “1984,” Eric Arthur Blair, was born in Bengal, studied at Eton, worked as a policeman, radio presenter and teacher, was a tramp and an employee of a second-hand bookshop, wrote books, and fought in Spain. Reading his diaries

Author Leonid Motylev

Eric Arthur Blair (1903–1950), who wrote under the pseudonym George Orwell, was born in Bengal into the family of an employee of the Opium Department of the British colonial administration. After graduating from the prestigious Eton School, he served with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma from October 1922 to December 1927. Then, having changed his life dramatically, he tried to make money through literary work, wandered, wrote books, articles and reviews, lived in a working-class area of ​​Paris, harvested hops in Kent, taught at school, worked in a London used bookstore, fought in Spain on the side of the Republicans, was wounded, recovered his health in Morocco in the late thirties, then lived in a village near London. During the Second World War he worked for BBC radio, was a war correspondent in France, Germany and Austria from February to May 1945, and then, widowed, lived most of the time on the Isle of Jura off the coast of Scotland, where he wrote "1984 " In January 1950 he died of tuberculosis.

Orwell kept diaries zealously, meticulously, sometimes in typewritten form, dividing them into home ones, dedicated to everyday life, and those where he wrote down his impressions and opinions about events in the world and the country. Everything was recorded, including the weather, fleeting impressions of meetings, the number of eggs sold during life on the farm. His Spanish diaries, as he writes in the book In Memory of Catalonia, were confiscated in Barcelona when the republican authorities, dependent on the USSR, repressed the POUM Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or Workers' Party of Marxist Unity, also known as POUM, a left-wing Marxist an anti-Stalinist party that existed in Spain in the 1930s, in whose militia Orwell served. It is likely that these diaries are still secretly stored in some closed Russian archive.

About theft

“When harvesting hops, one day is almost no different from the next. At a quarter to six in the morning we crawled out of the straw, put on our coats and boots (otherwise we slept), went outside, made a fire - not an easy task, this September it rained every now and then. By half past six they made tea, toasted some bread for breakfast and went to work, grabbing bacon sandwiches and a tin pot of iced tea for lunch. If there was no rain, they worked without a break for about an hour, then they made a fire among the stems, heated tea and rested for half an hour. Then back to work until half past six, and by the time you get home, wash the hop juice off your hands, drink tea, it’s already dark and sleep sweeps you off your feet. But often at night they went to steal apples. There was a large orchard nearby, and three or four of us regularly robbed it, putting fifty pounds of apples and several pounds of hazel into a bag.”

Hops harvesting. Diary All quotes from Orwell's diaries are translated by Viktor Golyshev, Mark Dadyan, Leonid Motylev and Lyubov Summ. . September 2–19, 1931

Eric Arthur Blair. Passport photo. Late 1920s georgeorwellnovels.com
George Orwell and three companions set out on August 28 to harvest hops. Before that - overnight stays in London flophouses and one night in Trafalgar Square among beggars and prostitutes. He describes his friend nicknamed Red in more detail than anyone else, calling him the most interesting. “Over the last five years, when he wasn’t in prison, there probably wasn’t a day that he didn’t break the law.” Harvesting hops. Diary. August 28, 1931.. A little later in the same diary, Orwell writes: “Several times at night Red persuaded me to go with him to rob a church - and would have gone alone if I had not hammered into his head that suspicion would certainly fall on him, since his criminal past is known." Harvesting hops. Diary. September 2–19, 1931. This was the life that Orwell voluntarily chose, giving up a decent salary as a peace officer. The title of his first book, Pounds of Dashing in Paris and London (1933), speaks for itself.

George Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair) was born on June 25, 1903, Motihari, India. English writer and publicist. Author of works - Burmese Days, For a Breath of Fresh Air, In Memory of Catalonia, Animal Farm, 1984, etc. Died January 21, 1950, London.

Aphorisms, quotes, sayings, phrases - George Orwell

• The purpose of power is power.
• There are no patriots when it comes to taxes.
• He who controls the past controls the future.
• The best books tell you what you already know.
• The fastest way to end a war is to lose it.
• The price of freedom is not eternal vigilance, but eternal dirt.
• Human progress may be just our illusion.
• Besides writing, my favorite thing is gardening.
• Advertising is rattling a stick inside a garbage can.
• The smaller the choice of words, the less the temptation to think.
• In times of universal lies, telling the truth is extremism.
• Nothing is yours except a few cubic centimeters in your skull.
• Workers get older earlier because they put up with it earlier.
• A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.
• Nine times out of ten, the revolutionary is a rock climber with a bomb in his pocket.
• Absolutely white, like absolutely black, seems to be some kind of visual defect.
• A bookstore is one of the few places where you can stay for a long time for free.
• We are all children of God, only I receive ten thousand a year, and you two pounds a week.
• When you reach perfection in a particular craft, you have already outgrown it.
• An embittered atheist does not so much not believe in God as dislike him.
• A normal person does not want power, therefore, power is always with the abnormal.
• People can be happy only if they do not consider happiness as the goal of life.
• Just because you're in the minority—even in the singular—doesn't mean you're crazy.
• By becoming a tyrant, the white man deals a mortal blow to his own freedom.
• A totalitarian state establishes dogmas that cannot be changed and changes them from day to day.
• Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. Serious sport is war minus murder.
• Each generation considers itself smarter than the previous one and wiser than the next.
• There is truth and there is untruth, and if you adhere to the truth, even in defiance of the whole world, you are not crazy.
• If the main goal in life is not the number of years lived, but honor and dignity, then what difference does it make when to die?
• I don't like big cities, noise, cars, radios, canned food, central heating and "modern" furniture.
• When you love someone, you love him, and if you can give him nothing else, you still give him love.
• Amputation of the soul is, presumably, not just a surgical operation like removing the appendix. Such wounds tend to fester.
• For the most part, people are weak and cowardly, not ready for freedom and afraid of the truth, which means that someone strong needs to control them and deceive them.
• Every writer who joins the party banner sooner or later faces a choice - either submit or shut up.
• Every line I have written in earnest since 1936 has been directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understood it.
• I have read of great battles in reports from places where there was no battle at all, of troops who fought bravely who were described as cowards and traitors, and of others who did not hear a shot but were admired as heroes of imaginary victories.

About lust that finds no solution

“When we stopped to light a fire and have lunch, two Scots tramps appeared, stealing apples from a neighboring orchard; They talked to us for a long time. Conversations revolved around sex - in a vile tone. Tramps are disgusting when they talk about these topics: poverty deprives them of women, and their minds are poisoned by obscenity. It’s just that lustful people are still bearable, but lust that does not find resolution monstrously spoils people.”

Hops harvesting. Diary. August 29, 1931

George Orwell's first wife, Eileen Blair (nee O'Shaughnessy). Passport photo. 1938 The Orwell Society
In the novel “1984” Orwell will turn this topic differently:

“The point is not only that the sexual instinct creates its own world, which is not subject to the control of the party, and therefore should be destroyed if possible. More importantly, sexual hunger causes hysteria, which is desirable because it can be transformed into military frenzy and leader worship. <…> <…> <…> There is a direct and close connection between abstinence and political faithfulness. How else to heat up hatred, fear and cretinous gullibility to the required degree, if not by tightly sealing some powerful instinct so that it turns into fuel? Sexual desire was dangerous for the party, and the party put it at its service." All quotes from the novel "1984" are given in the translation by Viktor Golyshev..

Orwell himself, apparently, was not inclined to cruelly suppress his sexual desires. The Times wrote about one evidence of this in January 2020. The writer's adopted son Richard Blair recently acquired his father's letters, mostly written during the years when he was married to Eileen O'Shaughnessy, two women - Brenda Salkeld and Elinor Jacques. "They were very personal letters," said Richard Blair. “I think in both cases there was physical contact at times.” According to one letter to Brenda Salkeld, Eileen was sympathetic to her husband's wishes: "She is willing to let me sleep with you about twice a year, just to make me feel good."

1984Text

***

It was women, and young people in the first place, who were the most fanatical adherents of the party, swallowers of slogans, willing spies and sniffers of heresy.

***

...he knew it was useless. Whether he writes “DOWN WITH BIGGER BROTHER” or not, it makes no difference. Whether the diary continues or not, it makes no difference. The Thought Police will get to him anyway. He committed - and if he had not touched the paper with his pen, he would still have committed - an absolute crime that contains all the others. Thoughtcrime is what it was called. Thoughtcrime cannot be hidden forever. You can dodge for some time, and even for more than one year, but sooner or later they will get to you.

***

If the party can reach back into the past and say about this or that event that it never happened, this is worse than torture or death.

The party says that Oceania never formed an alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knows that Oceania was allied with Eurasia just four years ago. But where is this knowledge stored? Only in his mind, and he, one way or another, will soon be destroyed. And if everyone accepts the lie imposed by the party, if all documents contain the same song, then this lie settles in history and becomes the truth. “Who controls the past,” says the party slogan, “controls the future; He who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, which is changeable by nature, has never been subject to change. What is true now is true from time to time and forever. Everything is very simple. All you need is a continuous chain of victories over your own memory. This is called “conquering reality”; in Newspeak it means “doublethink.”

***

... to forget what needs to be forgotten, and again to recall it when needed, and again to immediately forget, and, most importantly, to apply this process to the process itself - this is the most subtlety: consciously overcoming consciousness and at the same time not realizing that do self-hypnosis.

***

A true believer does not think—does not need to think. Faithfulness is an unconscious state.

***

The atmosphere of thinking will become different. There will be no thinking at all in our modern meaning. A true believer does not think—does not need to think. Faithfulness is an unconscious state.

***

It became difficult for him to continue. He closed his eyes and pressed his fingers on his eyelids to drive away the nagging vision. He had an unbearable urge to curse, long and loudly. Or hit your head against the wall, kick over the table, throw an inkwell at the window - with violence, noise, pain, whatever, drown out the memory tearing your soul.

Your worst enemy, he thought, is your nervous system. At any moment, internal tension can affect your appearance.

***

... in critical moments a person fights not with an external enemy, but always with his own body.

***

The point is not only that the sexual instinct creates its own world, which is not subject to the control of the party, and therefore should be destroyed if possible. More importantly, sexual hunger causes hysteria, which is desirable because it can be transformed into military frenzy and leader worship. Julia put it this way:

— When you sleep with a person, you waste energy; and then you feel good and don’t care at all. It's in their throats. They want the energy in you to bubble constantly. All this marching, shouting, waving flags - just rotten sex. If you're happy in yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother, three-year plans, two-minute hate and other vile nonsense?

***

Very true, he thought. There is a direct and close connection between temperance and political orthodoxy. How else to heat up hatred, fear and cretinous gullibility to the required degree, if not by tightly sealing some powerful instinct so that it turns into fuel? Sexual desire was dangerous for the party, and the party put it at its service. The same trick was done with parental instinct. The family cannot be abolished; on the contrary, love for children, preserved almost in its original form, is encouraged. Children are systematically turned against their parents, taught to spy on them and report on their deviations. Essentially, the family has become an appendage of the thought police. Each person is assigned an informant - his close one - around the clock.

***

... still very young, he thought, still expecting something from life, she doesn’t understand that pushing an unpleasant person off a cliff won’t solve anything.

***

She is still very young, he thought, she still expects something from life, she does not understand that pushing an unpleasant person off a cliff will not solve anything.

“Basically, it wouldn’t change anything.”

“Then why do you regret not pushing me?”

- Only because I prefer action to inaction. This game we are playing cannot be won. Some failures are better than others, that's all.

***

From what he remembered, he did not get the impression of her as an extraordinary woman, much less intelligent; but there was some kind of nobility, some kind of purity in her - simply because the standards she adhered to were personal. Her feelings were her feelings, they could not be changed from the outside. It would not have occurred to her that if an action has no result, it is meaningless. When you love someone, you love him, and if you have nothing more to give him, you still give him love. When the chocolate was gone, she hugged the baby to her chest. There was no use in it, it didn’t change anything, it didn’t bring back the chocolate, it didn’t avert death - neither her death nor the child’s; but it was natural for her to do so. The refugee in the boat also covered the child with her hand, although the hand could protect against bullets no better than a piece of paper.

***

But if the goal is not to stay alive, but to remain human, then what difference does it make in the end? They cannot change your feelings; for that matter, you yourself cannot change them, even if you want to.

***

But it was also clear that the general growth of well-being threatens the hierarchical society with death, and in a sense, it is already its death. In a world where the workday is short, where everyone is well-fed and lives in a house with a bath and a refrigerator, or owns a car or even an airplane, the most obvious, and perhaps the most important, form of inequality has already disappeared. Having become universal, wealth ceases to create differences. One can, of course, imagine a society where goods, in the sense of personal property and pleasure, will be distributed equally, and power will remain with a small privileged caste. But in reality, such a society cannot be sustainable for long. For if everyone can enjoy security and leisure, then the vast mass of people, dulled by poverty, will become literate and learn to think for themselves; after which these people will sooner or later realize that the privileged minority serves no function and throw them out. Ultimately, a hierarchical society is based only on poverty and ignorance.

***

The goal was to keep industry running at full speed without increasing the amount of wealth in the world. Goods must be produced, but not distributed. In practice, the only way to achieve this is continuous war.

***

The essence of war is the destruction of not only human lives, but also the fruits of human labor. War is a way to smash into pieces, disperse into the stratosphere, drown in the depths of the sea, materials that could improve the lives of the people and thereby ultimately make them smarter. Even when weapons are not destroyed on the battlefield, producing them is a convenient way to waste human labor and produce nothing for consumption.

***

In theory, military efforts are always planned to absorb any surplus that might remain after the minimum needs of the population have been satisfied. In practice, the needs of the population are always underestimated, and the result is a chronic shortage of basic necessities; but it is considered useful. It is a deliberate policy to keep even the privileged strata on the brink of deprivation, for general poverty increases the importance of petty privileges and thereby increases the differences between one group and another.

***

... the party has two goals: to conquer the entire globe and to destroy forever the possibility of independent thought. Therefore, she is concerned about two problems. The first is how, contrary to a person’s desire, to find out what he thinks, and how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds, without warning. These are the essence of the subjects with which the rest of science deals. Today's scientist is either a hybrid of a psychologist and an inquisitor, meticulously studying the nature of facial expressions, gestures, intonations and experiencing the effects of medications, shock procedures, hypnosis and torture in order to extract the truth from a person; or he is a chemist, physicist, biologist, engaged exclusively in those branches of his science that are associated with killing.

***

As a result, the ruling groups of all countries were convinced: a few more bombs - and the end of organized society, and, consequently, their power.

***

In the past, the rulers of all countries, although they sometimes understood the commonality of their interests and therefore limited the destructiveness of wars, still fought with each other, and the winner robbed the vanquished. These days they don't fight each other. The war is waged by the ruling group against its subjects, and the purpose of the war is not to avoid the seizure of its territory, but to preserve the social order.

***

The goals of these three groups are completely incompatible. The goal of the higher ones is to stay where they are. The goal of the middle ones is to change places with the top ones; The goal of the lower ones - when they have a goal, for it is characteristic of the lower ones that they are crushed by hard work and only from time to time direct their gaze beyond the boundaries of everyday life - to abolish all differences and create a society where all people should be equal. Thus, throughout history, struggles break out again and again, in general terms always the same. For a long time, the top seem to firmly hold power, but sooner or later a moment comes when they lose either faith in themselves, or the ability to govern effectively, or both. Then they are overthrown by the middle ones, who attracted the lower ones to their side by playing the role of fighters for freedom and justice. Having achieved their goal, they push the lower ones into their former slave position and themselves become higher. Meanwhile, the new averages peel away from one of the other two groups or from both, and the struggle begins all over again. Of the three groups, only the lowest never succeed in achieving their goals, even temporarily. Was

***

The ruling group loses power for four reasons. Either she has been defeated by an external enemy, or she has ruled so ineptly that the masses are in rebellion, or she has allowed a strong and dissatisfied middle group to form, or she has lost self-confidence and the desire to rule. These reasons are not isolated; Usually all four are affected to one degree or another. The ruling class, which can protect itself from them, will retain power forever. Ultimately, the decisive factor is the mental state of the ruling class itself.

***

... the succession of an oligarchy need not be biological, and did not think about the fact that hereditary aristocracies were always short-lived, while organizations based on recruitment - the Catholic Church, for example - lasted hundreds, even thousands of years. The essence of oligarchic rule is not in the hereditary transmission from father to son, but in the persistence of a certain worldview and way of life dictated by the dead to the living. The ruling group is the ruling group as long as it is able to appoint heirs. The Party is concerned not with perpetuating its blood, but with perpetuating itself. Who is in power is not important, as long as the hierarchical structure remains unchanged.

***

... the secret of dominion is to combine faith in one's own infallibility with the ability to learn from past mistakes.

***

If human equality is to be made forever impossible, if the superiors, as we call them, are to retain their place forever, then the prevailing state of mind must be controlled madness.

***

Just because you're in the minority—even in the singular—doesn't mean you're crazy. There is truth and there is untruth, and if you adhere to the truth, even in defiance of the whole world, you are not crazy.

***

In the Middle Ages there was an Inquisition. She turned out to be untenable. She sought to root out heresies, and as a result she perpetuated them. For every heretic burned at the stake, thousands of new ones rose up. Why? Because the Inquisition killed enemies openly, killed the unrepentant; in essence, that’s why she killed them because they didn’t repent. People died because they did not want to give up their beliefs. Naturally, all the glory went to the victim, and the shame went to the inquisitor, the executioner. Later, in the twentieth century, there were so-called totalitarian regimes. There were German Nazis and Russian communists. The Russians persecuted heresy more ruthlessly than the Inquisition. And they thought they had learned from the mistakes of the past; in any case, they realized that there was no need to create martyrs. Before bringing the victim to an open trial, they sought to deprive her of her dignity. Those arrested were exhausted by torture and loneliness and turned into pitiful, servile people who confessed everything that was put into their mouths, threw mud at themselves, blamed each other, whined and begged for mercy. And yet, just a few years later, the same thing happened. Those executed became martyrs, their insignificance was forgotten. Again - why? First of all, because their confessions were clearly extracted by force and were false. We don't make such mistakes. All the confessions that are made here are true. We make them true. And most importantly, we do not allow the dead to rise against us.

***

In former days, the heretic would go to the stake still a heretic, proclaiming his heresy, admiring it. Even a victim of the Russian purges, walking down the corridor and waiting for a bullet, could keep a rebellious thought under the lid of his skull. Before we knock out brains, we make them impeccable. The commandment of the old despotisms began with the words: “Don’t you dare.” The totalitarian commandment: “You must.” Our commandment is: “Thou art.”

***

... the party seeks power not for its own sake, but for the benefit of the majority. He seeks power because people for the most part are weak, cowardly creatures, they cannot tolerate freedom, they cannot face the truth, so they must be ruled and systematically deceived by those who are stronger than them. That humanity is faced with a choice: freedom or happiness, and for the vast majority, happiness is better.

***

The party seeks power solely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others, we are only interested in power. Neither wealth, nor luxury, nor long life, nor happiness - only power, pure power. What pure power means, you will soon understand. We know what we are doing, and this is our difference from all the oligarchies of the past. Everyone else, even those who resembled us, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and Russian communists were already very close to us in methods, but they did not have the courage to understand their own motives. They pretended and probably even believed that they had seized power by force, for a limited time, and ahead, just a stone’s throw away, was already visible a paradise where people would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that power is never seized in order to give it up. Power is not a means; she is the goal. A dictatorship is not established in order to protect the revolution; revolution is carried out in order to establish a dictatorship. The purpose of repression is repression. The purpose of torture is torture. The purpose of power is power. Now do you understand me a little?

***

An individual has power to the extent that he has ceased to be an individual. You know the party slogan: “Freedom is slavery.” Did it ever occur to you that it could be turned over? Slavery is freedom. One - a free - person always fails. This is as it should be, for every person is doomed to die, and this is his greatest flaw. But if he can submit completely, completely, if he can renounce himself, if he can dissolve in the party so that he becomes the party, then he is omnipotent and immortal.

***

... power is power over people, over the body, but most importantly, over the mind. Power over matter—over external reality, as you would call it—does not matter. We have already completely conquered matter.

***

- We conquered matter because we conquered consciousness. Reality is inside the skull.

***

- Winston, how does a person assert his power over another?

Winston thought.

“Making him suffer,” he said.

- Absolutely right. Making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. If a person is not suffering, how can you be sure that he is doing your will and not his own? Power is about hurting and humiliating. It's about tearing people's minds into pieces and putting them back together in whatever form you want.

***

Previous civilizations claimed to be based on love and justice. Ours is based on hatred. In our world there will be no other feelings except fear, anger, triumph and self-abasement. We will destroy all the rest. All.

***

They'll blow his brains out before they fix him. A heretical thought, unpunished, unrepentant, will become inaccessible to them forever. They will shoot a hole in their ideal. To die hating them is freedom.

***

White always checkmate, he thought with a vague mystical feeling. Always, there are no exceptions, that’s how it works. From time immemorial, Black has never won a single chess problem. Isn't this a symbol of the eternal, unchanging victory of Good over Evil?

***

“They can’t fit into you,” Julia said. But they were able to get in. "What is done to you here is done forever," O'Brien said. The right word. There are things—your own actions—from which you will never recover. Something in your chest is killed - etched, burned out.

***

For example, Newspeak allowed one to say, “All men are equal,” but only in the sense in which Oldspeak allowed one to say, “All men have red hair.” The phrase contained no grammatical errors, but stated an obvious untruth, namely that all people are equal in height, weight and strength.

About woodcocks and curlews

“This morning I saw a flock of birds flying and I’m almost sure they were woodcocks. Apparently, they gather in groups for a long-distance flight. At about 8:30 a dozen birds flew over me; from their long beaks and general outlines, at first it seemed that they were curlews, which had never been seen here. But they were too small for curlews and flew a little faster. Having moved away a little, they swerved to the side and down in a characteristic way, and I realized that these were woodcocks. What is slightly confusing is not that a dozen have gathered together, but that it is so early. I saw others in October, it was by the sea in Suffolk.”

Home diary. Volume II. September 12, 1939

George Orwell feeding Muriel the goat. Wallington, 1939 University College London Archives
This recording was made in Wallington, a village near London where Orwell lived for much of his time between 1936 and 1940. There are many similar observations of what caught his eye in his diaries. In Wallington, he records the weather, and his work on the plot, and the number of eggs laid by chickens and sold, and the amount of goat milk produced (the name of his goat was Muriel - the same name he would call the goat in the story "Animal Farm", published in 1945 ). Orwell describes everything around with meticulous interest: both material, practical, and living, which does not bring practical benefit. On September 20, 1938, for example, he described and sketched in detail the lathe of a Jewish carpenter in Marrakesh:

“There are two headstocks: the left one is stationary, the right one slides along a metal rod, both have a point. The piece of wood being processed is clamped by two points and rotates, the points are motionless. It is first wrapped with a bow string once. The carpenter holds the movable headstock with his right foot, and with his right hand moves the bow back and forth. He holds the cutter in his left hand, supporting it with his left leg for stability.”

And he found time to think about birds (or rather, about their absence) even in the midst of fighting in Spain:

“There was no trace of life anywhere, not even birds were flying. <…> <…> <…> Birds almost never appeared in the empty sky. Never before, perhaps, have I seen a country in which there were so few birds. We sometimes happened to notice birds that looked like a magpie, flocks of partridges that suddenly fluttered up at night and frightened the sentries, and, very rarely, eagles slowly circling in the sky, contemptuously not noticing the rifle fire that the soldiers opened on them.” J. Orwell. In memory of Catalonia. Essay. M., 2021. Translation by Vladimir Voronin..

But in other way:

“I saw a heron fly over Baker Street this evening. But it's not as incredible as what I saw two weeks ago, namely a kestrel killing a sparrow in the middle of Lord's Stadium. I think it is quite possible that the war, i.e. the reduction in transport, led to a revival of bird activity in central London." Wartime Diary. July 28, 1940. .

About flowers

“The following flowers are blooming in the garden now: polyanthus, aubrieta, scilla, muscari, sorrel, and several garden daffodils. There are a lot of daffodils in the field. They are very lush, a double row of petals, clearly not real wild daffodils, but from bulbs that fell into the ground by accident.”

Home diary. Volume I. April 12, 1939

George Orwell in Southwold. 1930s orwelltoday.com
This is also written in Wallington. Orwell, in his essay “England, Your England” (1941), called the love of flowers a national trait - although minor, but clearly expressed. Without a doubt, he himself was a bearer of this trait, and what he writes further in this essay is probably applicable to him in a broad sense: “However, it is connected with another trait of the English, so characteristic of us that we hardly we note - this is a commitment to various kinds of hobbies and leisure activities, with the deeply private nature of English life. We are a people of flower growers, but also stamp collectors, pigeon keepers, amateur carpenters...” Translation by Victor Golyshev.

Winston in the novel 1984 is seduced by a glass paperweight with coral inside: “The most attractive thing about this thing was its uselessness...” On October 6, 1939, Orwell writes in his Home Diary:

“This evening I discovered a phosphorescent worm or centipede, I have never seen or heard of anything like this before. Coming out onto the lawn, I noticed some kind of glow: it was a luminous strip that was constantly growing. I thought it must be a firefly, however, I have never seen a firefly that would leave a phosphorescent trail behind it. After searching with an electric flashlight, I discovered that it was a long and very thin worm-like creature with many thin legs on each side and two types of antennae on its head. Length approximately 1¼ inches. I managed to catch it in a test tube and brought it into the house, but the glow soon faded.”

About Spain

“The flag of Republican Spain is on two buildings, one is called La Casa de España Spanish House (Spanish). - something like a club, with the usual government posters. On some benches there are Francoist posters: the poster “Arriba España” Get up, Spain (Spanish). almost no different from the government one. There are not many inscriptions on the walls, pro-Franco and pro-government in approximately equal numbers - maybe a little more of the latter.”

Moroccan diary. Tangier, September 10, 1938

POUM militia in front of the party's headquarters in Barcelona. 1936 George Orwell towers in the back rows.
University College London Archives After being wounded in Spain in May 1937 (a sniper bullet hit him in the neck), Orwell was forced to hide with his wife in Barcelona: POUM, of which the writer was a member, was repressed by the Stalinist communists POUM, whose militia took part in the battles in the Republican side was especially influential in Catalonia and Valencia. In May-June 1937, repressions by the republican authorities began against POUM, where the positions of pro-Soviet communists were strong. POUM was declared a Trotskyist and "objectively fascist" organization. Many of its members were arrested, others were forced to go into hiding. Party leader Andreu Nin (1892–1937) was killed by NKVD agents. In June 1937, Orwell barely escaped from Spain. Doctors recommended that he live in a warm climate, and he chose Morocco. Meanwhile, the war in Spain continued; in the fall of 1938, in Barcelona, ​​the trial of the POUM leaders, who were declared fascist agents, was underway by the republican authorities. The city of Tangier on the southern shore of the Strait of Gibraltar had an international status, but the Spanish influence there was strong. Orwell, who by that time had already written “In Memory of Catalonia,” a book about his participation in the war, closely followed the events, wanting, in spite of everything, victory for the Republicans. In “Memory of Catalonia” he wrote, however, that if they win, a dictatorship will be established, also to some extent fascist.

Heroes of the novel "1984"

Winston Smith is the main character of the novel.

The elder brother is the sole leader of the Oceania state and the Ingsoc party. Not appearing in person, his image appears on numerous posters.

O'Brien is an Inner Party member who has held high office. A tall, stocky man with a thick neck and a rough, mocking face. Despite his menacing appearance, he was not without charm.

Emmanuel Goldstein is an enemy of the people. Once he was one of the leaders of the party, almost equal to Big Brother himself, and then he took the path of counter-revolution, was sentenced to death and mysteriously escaped and disappeared. Images (videos) of Emmanuel Goldstein were broadcast during the regularly scheduled Two Minutes of Hate.

Julia (eng. Julia) is a girl in love with Winston Smith. She is 26 years old, she is beautiful - she has lush brown hair and brown eyes, a thin waist. Works at the Ministry of Truth in the literature department. She skillfully pretends to be an ardent supporter of the Party, while constantly violating Party laws.

Ingsoc (English Socialism Party) is the totalitarian party of power ruling the country of Oceania.

About propaganda

“Any propaganda is a lie, even when you speak the truth. But it’s not that important, as long as you know what you’re doing and why.”

Second wartime diary. March 14, 1942

George Orwell on the BBC. 1940 British Broadcasting Corporation / Wikimedia Commons
So, not without his usual self-deprecation, Orwell characterizes his service at the BBC, where he worked in the Eastern Overseas Broadcasting to India, Malaysia and Indonesia. Propaganda, of course, comes in different forms. On March 16, 1936, Orwell writes:

“Last night I listened to Mosley speak... Sir Oswald Mosley (1896–1980) founded the British Union of Fascists in 1932. During World War II he was imprisoned. Orwell approved of his release in 1943. In the unprinted preface to Animal Farm, he writes: “In 1940 it was absolutely right to intern Mosley, whether he had committed a crime from a legal point of view or not. We fought to survive... But to still keep him in prison without trial in 1943 was outrageous.” Translation by Maria Karp. <…> Mosley spoke for an hour and a half and, to my chagrin, seemed to captivate most of the audience. At first they shushed him, but in the end they applauded loudly. Several people who tried to get a word in were thrown out with completely unnecessary cruelty. <…> M. is a very good speaker. His speech is the usual babbling rubbish: duty-free trade within the Empire, away with Jews and foreigners, higher wages, shorter working hours, etc., etc. After the initial boos, he easily fooled the (mostly) working-class audience, speaking as from a socialist position and accusing successive governments of betraying the interests of the working class. He blamed everything on mysterious international gangs of Jews..."

March 22 of the same year:

“The Communist rally in Market Place was disappointing. The trouble with all communist speakers is that they do not speak clearly, but in monstrously long phrases, with all sorts of “despite”, “irrespective of”, “even taking into account”, etc. <…> I assume that they are given pre-prepared speeches and they learn them by heart.”

A man of leftist views, a member of the Independent Labor Party, Orwell in 1936 still had certain expectations of the communists. The main disappointments in them awaited him ahead.

Orwell Quotes

Prepared by: Dmitry Sirotkin

I present to you a selection of quotes from the English writer George Orwell (1903 - 1950).

Orwell's books fought and continue to fight against authoritarianism in our crazy world.

Quotes are summarized by topic: authoritarianism, life ethics, truth and lies, people, writers, freedom, war, words, power, love, the masses, books, nationalism, socialism, revolutionaries, propaganda, reason.

Finally, there are quotes about Orwell.

About authoritarianism

Big brother is looking at you.

All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.

If you want an image of the future, imagine a boot trampling on a man's face—forever.

For the most part, people are weak and cowardly, not ready for freedom and afraid of the truth, which means that someone strong needs to control them and deceive them.

Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.

If the party can reach back into the past and say about this or that event that it never happened, this is worse than torture or death.

A society can be considered totalitarian when all its structures become blatantly artificial, that is, when the ruling class has lost its purpose, but clings to power by force or fraud.

On each landing, the same face looked out from the wall. The portrait was made in such a way that no matter where you went, your eyes wouldn’t let you go.

Leaders who frighten their people with blood, toil, tears and sweat are more trusted than politicians who promise well-being and prosperity.

You can calculate everything you said and thought, down to the smallest detail. But the soul, whose movements are mysterious even to yourself, remains impregnable.

We, representatives of the middle class, have nothing to lose except correct pronunciation.

Nothing is yours except a few cubic centimeters in your skull.

A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance.

About life ethics

Just because you're in the minority—even in the singular—doesn't mean you're crazy. There is truth and there is untruth, and if you adhere to the truth, even in defiance of the whole world, you are not crazy.

To see what is happening right in front of your nose requires a desperate struggle.

Society should always demand a little more from its members than they can give.

In any society, ordinary people must live against the existing order of things.

If you support totalitarian methods, then the moment will come when they will be used not for you, but against you.

If you follow the small rules, you can break the big ones.

Always yell with the crowd is my rule. That's the only way you're safe.

About truth and lies

In times of universal lies, telling the truth is extremism.

And if everyone accepts the lie imposed by the party, if all documents contain the same song, then this lie settles in history and becomes the truth.

Physical facts cannot be ignored. In philosophy, in religion, in ethics, in politics, two and two may equal five, but if you are building a gun or an airplane, two and two must equal four.

Since childhood I knew that newspapers can lie, but only in Spain did I see that they can completely falsify reality. I have personally participated in “battles” in which not a single shot was fired and which were written about as heroic bloody battles, and I have been in real battles about which the press said not a word, as if they had not happened.

But everything is fine, everything is fine now, the fight is over. He won a victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.

By the way, quotes about truth and quotes about lies

About people

Maybe a person does not need love as much as understanding.

People can be happy only if they do not consider happiness as the goal of life.

Each generation considers itself smarter than the previous one and wiser than the next.

At fifty, each of us has the face we deserve.

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing anything. He doesn't give milk, he doesn't lay eggs, he's too weak to pull a plow, he's too slow to catch rabbits. Yet he is the supreme ruler over all animals. He sends them to work, he gives them just enough to feed them so that they do not suffer from hunger - everything else remains in his possession.

By the way, quotes about people

About the writers

Every writer, especially a novelist, whether he admits it or not, has a “message”, and all his work, down to the smallest detail, is determined by it. All art is propaganda.

Every writer who joins the party banner sooner or later faces a choice - either submit or shut up.

It is impossible to write anything sensible if you do not constantly suppress the personal in yourself. Good prose is like cleanly washed window glass.

A popular writer is expected to write the same book all the time, forgetting that the one who writes the same book twice is not able to write it even once.

When they say that a writer is in fashion, this almost certainly means that only people under thirty years of age admire him.

About freedom

Freedom is the ability to say that two and two are four. If this is allowed, everything else follows from here.

- How many fingers am I showing, Winston? - Four. - And if the party says that there are not four, but five, then how many?..

Freedom is the right to tell people what they don't want to hear.

By becoming a tyrant, the white man deals a mortal blow to his own freedom.

Opponents of intellectual freedom always try to pretend that they are calling for a struggle “for discipline against individualism.”

By the way, quotes about freedom

About war

The essence of war is the destruction of not only human lives, but also the fruits of human labor. War is a way to smash into pieces, disperse into the stratosphere, drown in the depths of the sea, materials that could improve the lives of people and thereby ultimately make them smarter.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia: Oceania was always at war with Eurasia.

We will probably not be wrong if we say that, having become constant, war ceased to be war. Permanent peace would be the same as constant war. This is the deep meaning - although most party members understand it superficially - of the party slogan WAR IS PEACE.

The fastest way to end a war is to lose it.

By the way, quotes about war

About words

Political language is needed to make lies sound truthful, to make murder look respectable, and to make the air breathable.

Each reduction was a success, for the smaller the choice of words, the less the temptation to think.

It's wonderful to destroy words. The main garbage has accumulated, of course, in verbs and adjectives, but also among nouns - hundreds and hundreds of unnecessary ones. Not just synonyms; There are also antonyms. Well, tell me, why do you need a word that is the complete opposite of another? The word itself contains its opposite.

Insincerity is the main enemy of clear speech.

By the way, quotes about speech and words

About power

Power is about hurting and humiliating. It's about tearing people's minds into pieces and putting them back together in whatever form you want.

Power is not a means; she is the goal. A dictatorship is not established in order to protect the revolution; revolution is carried out in order to establish a dictatorship. The purpose of repression is repression. The purpose of torture is torture. The purpose of power is power.

The proletarians will never rise up - not in a thousand years, not in a million. They cannot rebel. There is no need to explain the reason to you; you know it yourself. And if you entertained dreams of an armed uprising, leave them. There is no way to overthrow the party. The power of the party is forever. Take this as a starting point in your thinking.

About love

When you love someone, you love him, and if you have nothing more to give him, you still give him love.

Confession is not betrayal. What you said or didn’t say is not important, only the feeling is important. If they force me to stop loving you, that will be a real betrayal.

The Ministry of Love inspired fear. There were no windows in the building. Winston never crossed his threshold, never came closer than half a kilometer to him. It was possible to get there only on official business, and then after going through a whole labyrinth of barbed wire, steel doors and camouflaged machine gun nests.

By the way, quotes about love

About the masses

It makes no difference what views the masses adhere to and what they do not. They can be given intellectual freedom because they have no intellect.

The masses never rebel on their own and they never rebel only because they are oppressed. Moreover, they do not even realize that they are oppressed until they are given the opportunity to compare.

People with empty stomachs never despair; in fact, they don’t even know what it is...

About books

Good novels are written by brave people.

The best books tell you what you already know.

Tragedy arises not when goodness is defeated, but when a person seems nobler than the forces that destroy him.

By the way, quotes about books

About nationalism

Patriotism by its nature is not aggressive either militarily or culturally. Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power.

Every nationalist is haunted by the idea that the past can—and should—be changed.

Many people feel at ease in a foreign land, only despising the natives.

About socialism

The worst advertisement for socialism (as well as Christianity) is its adherents.

In Europe, communism arose in order to destroy capitalism, but within a few years it degenerated into an instrument of Russian foreign policy.

The truth is that for many people who call themselves socialists, revolution does not mean the movement of the masses with which they hope to associate themselves; it means a set of reforms that “we”, the smart ones, are going to impose on “them”, the lower order beings.

About revolutionaries

Nine times out of ten, the revolutionary is a rock climber with a bomb in his pocket.

Most revolutionaries are potential conservatives.

A typical socialist is a neat little man, usually a petty official and a secret teetotaler, often a vegetarian, who - and this is the most important thing about him - will not exchange his social position for anything.

About propaganda

War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.

When printing was invented, it became easier to control public opinion; radio and cinema made it possible to step even further in this direction. And with the development of television technology, when it became possible to receive and transmit with one device, private life came to an end.

About reason

Common sense is not a statistical concept.

In our society, those who are most aware of what is happening are the least able to see the world as it is. In general, the more understanding, the stronger the illusions: the smarter, the crazier.

About miscellaneous

Absolutely white, like absolutely black, seems to be some kind of visual defect.

There is no way in hell you want the pain to get worse. All you want from pain is for it to end. There is nothing worse in life than physical pain. There are no heroes in the face of pain.

If you want to keep a secret, you have to hide it from yourself.

There are situations when “wrong” beliefs are more sincere than “true” ones.

An embittered atheist does not so much not believe in God as dislike him.

An irrefutable sign of a genius: women don’t like his books.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. Serious sport is war minus murder.

An autobiography can only be trusted if it reveals something shameful.

Advertising is rattling a stick inside a garbage can.

Has it ever occurred to you that in every fat person there is a thin person hidden, just as there is a statue hidden in every block of stone?

Rather, unfortunately, Orwell’s works have not lost their relevance to this day. Humanity does not keep up with changes in the world, and here and there it succumbs to the temptation of simple and supposedly effective solutions coming from big and small leaders.

Quotes about Orwell

• V. Nabokov: In my idea of ​​literary criticism there is no place for “spiritual affinity” at all, but if you choose a kindred spirit, then of course this great artist [Kafka], and not J. G. Orwell or any of the other popular purveyors of ideological illustrations and novelized journalism. (by the way, quotes from Nabokov)
• E. Fromm: Hope can only be realized if it is seen, so "1984" teaches us that the danger that faces all people today is the danger of a society of robots who have lost the last traces of individuality, love, critical thinking, and even realize this because of “doublethink.” Books like Orwell's are powerful warnings, and it will be unfortunate if the reader smugly understands 1984 as just another account of Stalinist barbarity and fails to notice that this applies to us too.
• Z. Prilepin: So if we say that Orwell’s world exists somewhere, then it exists throughout the world. If you think that it exists only in Russia, then this is simply ignorance of the realities. Which, of course, does not negate the fact that somewhere on the ground there may be thieving officials, and the chief of police will suddenly turn out to be a cannibal. This is everywhere in the world. We are an average European country.
• D. Bykov: I don’t think that “1984” is such a dystopia. This is an insight about the connection between love and freedom, a very accurate insight about future technologies for human control. I actually like 1984. I always said: it was believed that Orwell was a weak writer and a strong thinker, but in my opinion, it’s the opposite.

Next, you can move on to other collections of quotes:

• Bradbury quotes
• Churchill quotes
• Wilde quotes
• Bulgakov quotes
• Pelevin quotes
• Gogol quotes

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About the gift of foresight

“...Most of the ability of people like us to understand a situation better than the so-called experts lies not in predicting specific events, but in the ability to comprehend the kind of world we live in. <…> Since 1934 I knew that war was approaching between England and Germany, and since 1936 I knew it with complete confidence. <...> Likewise, such horrors as the Russian purges never surprised me, because I always felt that this - not exactly this, but something similar - was inherent in Bolshevik rule. I felt it in their literature."

Wartime diary. June 8, 1940

George Orwell at work. Morocco, 1938-1939 University College London Archives
A few lines above, Orwell writes: “Part of the matter is that I am not blinded by class interests, etc...” To some extent this makes it clear who “we” are. One might assume that he is also referring to his writer's intuition. This passage in the diary echoes what Orwell writes in the essay “My Country, Right or Left” (1940):

“I cannot say in what year I first clearly understood that the current war was approaching. After 1936, this was clear to everyone except idiots. For several years the coming war was a nightmare to me, and I even wrote pamphlets and made speeches against it. But the night before the Russian-German Pact was announced, I dreamed that the war had begun. I don’t know how the Freudians would interpret my dream, but it was one of those dreams that sometimes reveal to you the true state of your feelings. He explained to me, firstly, that I would simply be relieved when the long-awaited war began with horror, and, secondly, that I was a patriot at heart, I would not sabotage or act against my own, I would support the war and, if possible, , fight. I went downstairs and read in the newspaper a message about Ribbentrop’s arrival in Moscow.” Translation by Viktor Golyshev..

About the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

“By the time Ribbentrop arrived, the Moscow airport was decorated with swastikas. "M. Guardian" Manchester Guardian newspaper. adds that they were blocked by screens so that the rest of Moscow would not see them.”

Diary of events leading to the war. August 24, 1939

Stalin and Ribbentrop in the Kremlin. 1939 Bundesarchiv
Later, in 1984, Orwell would vividly depict the dramatic change in political course:

“The speech had already been going on for about twenty minutes, when suddenly a courier ran up to the podium and handed the speaker a piece of paper. He unfolded it and read it without stopping talking. Nothing changed either in his voice, or in his behavior, or in the content of his speech, but the names suddenly became different. Without any words, a wave of understanding swept through the crowd. We are at war with Eastasia! <…> In hindsight, Winston was amazed at how the speaker changed his line literally mid-sentence, not only without stuttering, but without even breaking the syntax.”

Countries (Part 2, Chapter 9)

Eurasia occupies the entire northern part of the European and Asian continents, from Portugal to the Bering Strait.

Oceania includes the Americas, the Atlantic islands, including the British, Australasia and Southern Africa.

Eastasia , the smallest of the three and with an incompletely established western boundary, includes China, the countries south of it, the Japanese Islands and large but non-permanent parts of Manchuria, Mongolia and Tibet.

About Jews and the island worldview

“I was surprised to discover that D., undoubtedly of leftist views, is inclined to share the current sentiments against the Jews. He says that Jews in business circles are becoming pro-Hitler, or preparing to become so. It sounds almost unbelievable, but according to D., they will always admire the one who kicks them. Personally, I feel that any Jew, that is, a European Jew, would prefer a social system of Hitler's type to ours, if it did not happen that he persecutes them. The same applies to almost any resident of Central Europe, i.e. refugees. They use England as a refuge, but cannot help but feel the deepest contempt for it. You can see it in their eyes, even if they don't speak out openly. The point is that the island worldview and the continental one are completely incompatible.”

Wartime diary. October 25, 1940

Journalist's card of George Orwell University College London Archives
Orwell, as we see, to some extent shared the idea of ​​Jews as carriers of an egoistic principle and an alien element. In an earlier diary entry (dated August 2, 1939), he notes disapprovingly: “Jewish refugees from Germany seem to be settling in large numbers in some parts of London, e.g., Golders Green, and buying houses, which they can afford money". However, in April 1945, when much had already become known about Nazi crimes against Jews, he published an essay, “Anti-Semitism in Britain” (1945), in which he called on thinking people (including, it seems, himself) to examine their prejudices:

“...Something elusive, some psychological vitamin is missing from modern civilization, and as a result of this we are all susceptible to insanity - the belief that entire races or nations can mysteriously be good or bad. I challenge any modern intellectual: try to look honestly and carefully into your own mind, and you will find there nationalist loyalties and hatreds towards one or another group of people." Translation by Victor Golyshev..

In the essay “England, Your England,” Orwell criticizes the “insular worldview” (isolationism) of the British, putting it on a par with xenophobia and reluctance to take foreigners seriously. In some narrow sense, however, the insular worldview was probably characteristic of Orwell himself: from May 1946 to January 1949, he lived mostly on the Inner Hebridean island of Jura, with a population of about 250 people, where he wrote the novel 1984.

Ministries in Oceania

The Ministry of Truth (“mini-rights”) is engaged in the constant falsification of any socially significant information (statistical data, historical facts, interpretation of events) in the media, books, education, art, sports, etc.

Ministry of Plenty (“minizo”) - rations and controls the supply of food, goods and household items. Every quarter, Minizo publishes false claims about improving living standards, when in reality it tends to reduce and reduce the names, availability and quantities of consumer goods.

The Ministry of Love (“minilove”) is engaged in the recognition, re-education and destruction of real and potential thought criminals.

About goggle-eyed faces and flashy colors

“Whenever I walk through subway stations, I am sick of the advertising, the stupid bug-eyed faces and garish colors, all these desperate attempts to seduce people into wasting labor and materials, consuming useless luxuries or harmful drugs. How much rubbish this war will carry away just to make it through the summer. War is simply the underside of civilized life, its motto is “Henceforth, Evil, be my good.” From John Milton’s poem “Paradise Lost.” war causes harm."

Wartime diary. June 14, 1940

Orwell combined his rejection of any dictatorship with anti-bourgeoisism. His novel “Long live the ficus!” is imbued with contempt for vulgar advertising. (1936). In his diary “The Road to Wigan Pier” in February 1936, he writes: “Once again I am amazed that as soon as a working man gets an official position in a trade union or joins Labor politics, he, whether willingly or not, joins the middle class , that is, by fighting the bourgeoisie, he himself becomes bourgeois. Your lifestyle and your ideology inevitably change according to your income.”

On intellectual honesty

“When I talk to anyone or read the texts of anyone who has any personal biases, I see that intellectual honesty and balanced judgment have simply disappeared from the face of the earth. Everyone’s thought is “prosecutor’s”; everyone only presents his own arguments, deliberately suppressing the opinion of his opponent and, moreover, with complete insensitivity to any suffering other than his own and his friends. The Indian nationalist is drowning in self-pity and hatred of Britain and is completely indifferent to the misfortunes of China; the English pacifist works himself into a frenzy talking about concentration camps on the Isle of Man, and forgets about those in Germany, etc., etc. You notice this in relation to people with whom you disagree, such as fascists or pacifists, but in fact, everyone is the same, at least everyone who has a certain opinion.”

Second wartime diary. April 27, 1942

George Orwell in his Canonbury apartment. Photo by Vernon Richards. 1945 © Vernon Richards / University College London Archives
Orwell would later develop this idea in relation to writing in his essay “Writers and Leviathan” (1946):

“...adherence to any political doctrine with its disciplinary effect seems to contradict the essence of the writing ministry. This also applies to doctrines such as pacifism or individualism, although they claim to be outside of everyday political struggle. Really, all words ending in “ism” bring with them a whiff of propaganda. <…> <…> <…> ...creativity, if it has at least some value, will always be the result of the efforts of that more intelligent being who remains on the sidelines, testifies to what is happening, adhering to the truth, recognizes the necessity of what is happening, however refuses to be deceived about the true nature of events" Translation by A. Shishkin..

In August 1944, when it was not customary in England to speak ill of an ally, the USSR, Orwell wrote to his friend John Middleton Murray: “I believe that for people like us who think something very bad has happened to the Soviet Union , the willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is a criterion of intellectual honesty.”