Quotes By Letter: O
“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.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“Behind Winston's back, the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig iron and the overfulfillment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is forever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“He knelt down before her and took her hands in his
'Have you done this before?'
'Of course. Hundreds of times — well scores of times anyway'
'With Party members.'
'Yes, always with Party members.'
'With members of the Inner Party?'
'Not with those swine, no. But there's plenty that would if they got half a chance. They're not so holy as they make out.'
His heart leapt. Scores of times she had done it: he wished it had been hundreds — thousands. Anything that hinted at corruption always filled him with a wild hope. Who knew, perhaps the Party was rotten under the surface, its cult of strenuousness and self-denial simply a sham concealing iniquity. If he could have infected the whole lot of them with leprosy or syphilis, how gladly he would have done so! Anything to rot, to weaken, to undermine! He pulled her down so that they were kneeling face to face.
'Listen. The more men you've had, the more I love you. Do you understand that?'
'Yes, perfectly.'
'I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don't want any virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.
'Well then, I ought to suit you, dear. I'm corrupt to the bones.'
'You like doing this? I don't mean simply me: I mean the thing in itself?'
'I adore it.'
That was above all what he wanted to hear. Not merely the love of one person but the animal instinct, the simple undifferentiated desire: that was the force that would tear the Party to pieces.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. Perhaps that was less true when you were actually in their hands. One did not know what happened inside the Ministry of Love, but it was possible to guess: tortures, drugs, delicate instruments that registered your nervous reactions, gradual wearing-down by sleeplessness and solitude and persistent questioning. Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“His cigarette had gone out, and he laid it carefully on the edge of the table. He would finish smoking it after work, if he could keep the tobacco in it. Quite likely the person at the next table was a spy of the Thought Police, and quite likely he would be in the cellars of the Ministry of Love within three days, but a cigarette end must not be wasted.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“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 it is an abiding characteristic of the Low 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 in which all men shall be equal.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“The essence of oligarchical rule is not father-to-son inheritance, but the persistence of a certain world-view and a certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living. A ruling group is a ruling group so long as it can nominate its successors. The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same.”
-1984, George Orwell
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“War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength”
-1984, George Orwell
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“When I saw the prisoner step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working- bowels digesting food, skin renewing itself, nails growing, tissues forming- all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth-of-a-second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned- reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us would be gone- one mind less, one world less.”
-A Hanging, George Orwell
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“Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
-Animal Farm, George Orwell
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“He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him).”
-Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell
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“Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket.”
-Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell
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“The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
-Second Thoughts On James Burnham, George Orwell
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“I have wished you dead and myself dead.
How could it be otherwise.
I have broken into you like a burglar.
And you've set your dogs on me.
And a pile of broken sticks.
A child could kick.
I have climbed you like a monument, gasping,
For the exercise and the view,
And leaned over the railing at the top...
Strong and warm, the summer wind.”
-I Have Wished You Dead, Alicia Ostriker
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“AND THERE'S A LADY IN A STABLE
HER DADDY READS HER FABLES
ABOUT THE MOON & HIS BRIDE
HE'S IN HER ROOM EVERY NIGHT
& FEEDS UPON A TABLE
OF SILKEN ROBES
AN ALTAR OF STONE
BUT THE CHILD IS UNABLE
TO RUN, RUN, RUN
& FLEE HIS TOWER OF BABEL
SO BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD
SLITHERS DOWN HER ANKLES...”
-House of Secrets, OTEP
Recommended by Alex.
~
“i will tell you a secret,
5 lifetimes old ...
my life has been a prison,
a labyrinth built beneath the mountain of Tragedy.
i'm a stain on the cloth.
i'm just an after-thought.
but i
would die
for this ....
but through the veins of decay
i'll remain to betray
to live like Caesar.
to die like Jesus.
to build my own religion,
no gods, no laws
to celebrate pain
forsaken & ashamed
to watch them all,
crawl beneath us ...
on this bed of nails & regret
dying of fevers, betrayal, & sweat.”
-Nein, OTEP
Recommended by Alex.
~
“Are you worried about your faith
Kneel down and obey
You're happy, you're in love
You need someone to hate
An ordinary girl, an ordinary waist
But ordinary's just not good enough today.”
-Superman's Dead, Our Lady Peace
Recommended by Shay.
~
“Once, when I was seven or eight, my mother said to me, as we sat on the last seat but one on the bus to the clinic, or the shoe shop, that while it was true that books could change with the years just as much as people could, the difference was that whereas people would always drop you when they could no longer get any advantage or pleasure or interest or at least a good feeling from you, a book would never abandon you. Naturally you sometimes dropped them, maybe for several years, or even forever. But they, even if you betrayed them, would never turn their backs on you: they would go on waiting for you silently and humbly on their shelf. They would wait for ten years. They wouldn't complain. One night, when you suddenly needed a book, even at three in the morning, even if it was a book you had abandoned and erased from your heart for years and years, it would never disappoint you, it would come down from its shelf and keep you company in your moment of need. It would not try to get its own back or make excuses or ask itself if it was worth its while or if you deserved it or if you still suited each other, it would come at once as soon as you asked. A book would never let you down.”
-A Tale of Love and Darkness, Amos Oz
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