Animal Farm / 1984 Quotes
"The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth."
"Man is the only creature that consumes without producing."
"I have no wish to take life, not even human life."
"Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey."
"Do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL!"
"This very morning we begin rebuilding the windmill, and we will build all through the winter, rain or shine."
"Starvation seemed to stare them in the face."
"The potatoes had become soft and discoloured, and only a few were edible."
"It was vitally necessary to conceal this fact from the outside world."
"The animals were stupefied. This was a wickedness far outdoing Snowball's destruction of the windmill."
"If Comrade Napoleon says it, it must be right."
"No animal had ever actually retired. The talk of setting aside a corner of the pasture for superannuated animals had long since been dropped."
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."
"The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect."
"Orthodoxy means not thinking—not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever."
"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
"In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it."
"The best books... are those that tell you what you know already."
"Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing."
"Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else."
"Until they became conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."
"Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system."
"At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom."
"The proper thing was to kill yourself before they got you."
"Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four."
"But the past not only changed, but changed continuously."
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth."
"If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?"
"It was not wise even to be seen in the neighborhood of such people."
"It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution."
"If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love."
"If they could make me stop loving you—that would be the real betrayal."
"They can make you say anything—anything—but they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you."
"If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any result whatever, you've beaten them."
"The inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable."
"It's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway."
"Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again."
"The one thing that matters is that we shouldn't betray one another, although even that can't make the slightest difference."
"Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter."
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture repainted, every statue and street building renamed, every date altered."
"They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart...remained impregnable."
"Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad."
"It was only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely."
"The Party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself."
"In the face of the Thought Police, there is no other way."
"To the future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone."
"They say that time heals all things, They say you can always forget; But the smiles and the tears across the years, They twist my heartstrings yet!"
"The funny thing is I made sure it was full. I'm going to put my clothes on," she added. "It seems to have got colder."
"The sun must have gone down behind the houses; it was not shining into the yard any longer."
"Why should the fruit be held inferior to the flower?"
"You are the dead," said an iron voice behind them.
"Everything was all right, there was no more pain, the last detail of his life was laid bare, understood, forgiven."
"I don't know—I don't care. Somehow you will fail. Something will defeat you. Life will defeat you."
"Until now he had not seemed to notice how thin and weak he was."
"He was aware of his ugliness, his gracelessness."
"It will not last forever," he said. "You can escape from it whenever you choose."
"You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything."
"His feeling toward her had remained the same."
"He was growing fatter and stronger every day."
"Merely to be alone, not to be beaten or questioned, to have enough to eat, and to be clean all over, was completely satisfying."
"He dreamed a great deal all through this time, and they were always happy dreams."
"The past was alterable. The past never had been altered."
"Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain."
"He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark mustache."