The Party Quotes

“The command of the old despotisms was "Thou shalt not". The command of the totalitarians was "Thou shalt". Our command is "Thou art".”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love. when the last of the chocolate was gone, his mother had clasped the child in her arms. It was no use, it changed nothing, it did not produce more chocolate, it did net avert the child's death or her own; but it seemed natural to do it. The refugee woman in the boat had also covered the little boy with her arm, which was no more use against bullets than a sheet of paper. The terrible thing that the party has done was to persuade you that mere impulses, mere feelings, were of no account, while at the same time robbing you of all power over the material world. When once you were in the grip of the Party, what you felt or did not feel, what you did or refrained from doing, made literally no difference. Whatever happened you vanished, and neither you nor your actions were ever heard of again. You were lifted clean out of history.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face.”
― George Orwell

“Past events, it is argued, have no objective existence, but survive only in written record and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“He realised how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“If one cannot work for the Party any longer one must be able to look the truth in the face and die...”
― Victor Sebestyen, Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror

“Haven't you learned by now that he's as powerless as the rest of us? We're at the Party's mercy. If only we'd accepted that from the start.”
― Kirstin Chen, Bury What We Cannot Take

“If somebody is telling you there is one history, one people & one version of events, you should consider what side of history that they're on.”
― Sara Ellie MacKenzie