1984 - George Orwell

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.

The one certain thing was that death never came at an expected moment.

It is impossible to found a civilization on fear and hatred and cruelty.
It would never endure.

Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date.

The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy – everything.

The end was contained in the beginning.

The heresy of heresies was common sense.
And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right.
For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four?
Or that the force of gravity works?
Or that the past is unchangeable?
If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable what then?

"How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?"
"Four."
"And if the party says that it is not four but five--then how many?"

The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual.

'By itself,' he said, 'pain is not always enough.
There are occasions when a human being will stand out against pain, even to the point of death.
But for everyone there is something unendurable--something that cannot be contemplated.
Courage and cowardice are not involved.
If you are falling from a height it is not cowardly to clutch at a rope.
If you have come up from deep water it is not cowardly to fill your lungs with air.
It is merely an instinct which cannot be destroyed.

It was precisely the amateur spy who was the greatest danger of all.

The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed.
Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.