Michael

“Silence allows the brain to recover.”
― Justin Zorn, Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise

“To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm and 1984

“Facebook, she realized, had moved from targeting dangerous actors to targeting dangerous ideas, building systems that could quietly smother a movement in its infancy. She heard echoes of George Orwell’s thought police. To her, this was getting creepy, and unnecessary.”
― Jeff Horwitz, Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Harmful Secrets

“swirl of gritty dust”
― George Orwell, 1984