Sophia’s Reviews > 1984 > Status Update

one does not establish a dictatorship.. to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship

the object of persecution is persecution. the object of torture is torture. the object of power is power.

we control matter because we control the mind. reality is inside the skulls

he had understood…weighed it all and it made no difference: all was justified by the ultimate purpose. what can you do…against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your abutments a fair hearing and simply persists in his lunacy?

power is not a means, it is an end

where does the past exist…in records…in human memories…how can you stop people remembering things…it is involuntary, outside oneself

you believe reality is something objective, existing in its own right…reality is not external. reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else. not in the individual mind…only in the mind of the party, which is collective and immortal

if i could save julia by doubling my own pain.. i would. but that was merely an intellectual decision taken because he ought to… he did not feel it.. in the face of pain, there were no heroes.

the sky was the same for everybody…the people under the sky were also..the same…people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same

only by reconciling contradictions, can power be obtained indefinitely

so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed

the object of war is not to.. prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact

by becoming continuous, war has ceased to exist

a peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war

what is hereditary cannot be permanent. he did not see that the continuity of an oligarchy need not be physical, nor did he pause to reflect that hereditary aristocracies have always been short lived... the essence of oligarchical rule is not father to son inheritance, but persistence of a certain world view and certain way of life, imposed by the dead upon the living.