The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end
we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to
express it.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 1, ch. 5
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 1, ch. 7
Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an un-person.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 2, ch. 5
Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind
simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 2, ch. 9
Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a
revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 3, ch. 3
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1949) pt. 3, ch. 3
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
‘Polemic’ May 1946 ‘Second Thoughts on James Burnham’
A person of bourgeois origin goes through life with some expectation of getting what he wants,
within reasonable limits. Hence the fact that in times of stress ‘educated’ people tend to come to
the front.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) ch. 3
The typical Socialist is...a prim little man with a white-collar job, usually a secret teetotaller
and often with vegetarian leanings, with a history of Nonconformity behind him, and, above all,
with a social position which he has no intention of forfeiting.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) ch. 11
To the ordinary working man, the sort you would meet in any pub on Saturday night,
Socialism does not mean much more than better wages and shorter hours and nobody bossing you
about.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) ch. 11
The high-water mark, so to speak, of Socialist literature is W. H. Auden, a sort of gutless
Kipling.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) ch. 11
We of the sinking middle class...may sink without further struggles into the working class
where we belong, and probably when we get there it will not be so dreadful as we feared, for,
after all, we have nothing to lose but our aitches.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937) ch. 13
Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
‘The Road to Wigan Pier’ (1937)
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.