History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
In a time of universal deceit—telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
- Topic: Society, Truth
- Location: Arches National Park
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from George Orwell
However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.
They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.
Films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.
It's frightful that people who are so ignorant should have so much influence.
Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.
Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”
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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.
When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?
You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.
The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance.
You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.
Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind.
It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.
No matter how big the lie; repeat it often enough and the masses will regard it as the truth.
Racism must be opposed by all means that humanity has at its disposal.
Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.
However much you deny the truth, the truth goes on existing.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth.
But all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.