Ignorance In 1984 Quotes

The more intelligent, the less sane

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental , nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy: they are deliberate exercises in doublethink

In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Records told the same tale, then the lie passed into history and became truth.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.

From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.

…the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.

He who controls the past controls the future.

In the past the need for a hierarchal form of society has been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and the priests, lawyers and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of an imaginary world beyond the grave.

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.

In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion; the more intelligent, the less sane.

If human equality is to be forever averted — if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently — then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.

Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.