1984 key qoutes

• Oligarchic power

  • O'brien - 'we know what we're doing'. (reference to past regimes e.g. nazis).
  • O'brien - 'power is not a means, it is an end'. (reference to failed regimes before e.g. stalin).
• Control over mind and nature

  • O'brien - 'We control matter because we control the mind'.
  • O'brien - 'We make the laws of nature'.
• Religious connotations

  • 'We are the priests of power'.
  • 'The party is immortal'.
• Domination

  • 'Everything else we will destroy - everything'.
  • 'Imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever'.
• Slogans of the party

  • 'War is peace'.
  • 'Freedom is slavery'.
  • 'Ignorance is strength'.
• 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past'.
• Winston thinks this after he starts writing in his diary.

  'He was already dead'.
• About the paperweight:

  'Belonging to an age quite different from the present one'.
• 'Desire was thoughtcrime'.
• Winston reflects on his and julia's different attitudes towards rebellion against the party.


  'The clever thing was to break the rules and stay alive all the same'.
• Big brother qoutes

  • 'Ruggedly handsome features'.
  • 'The mere power of his voice'.
  • 'Nobody heard what big brother was saying'.
  • 'The hypnotic eyes gazed into his own'.
• Glass paperweight

  • 'It's a little chunk of history that they've forgotten to alter'.
  • 'He had a feeling he could get inside it'.
  • 'The paperweight was the room he was in'.
• The place where there is no darkness

  • 'He had dreamed that he was walking through a pitch-dark room'.
  • 'We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness'.
  • 'The lights would never be turned out'.
  • 'O'brien had seemed to recognise the allusion'.
• Telescreens

  • 'Oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror'.
  • 'He could be seen as well as heard'.
  • 'There was of course no way of knowing wether you were being watched at any given moment'.
  • 'Winston was listening to the telescreen'.
• Prole woman

  • 'The woman sang so tunefully'.
  • 'It struck him as a curious fact that he had never heard a member of the party singing alone and spontaneously'.
  • 'It struck him for the first time that she was beautiful '.
  • 'Blown up to monstrous dimensions by childbearing'.