1984 book quotes from George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four remain some of the most important and widely recognized lines in modern literature.
First published in 1949, this classic novel imagines a world where truth is manipulated, history is rewritten, and personal freedom is crushed under totalitarian rule.
The quotes below from the Novel 1984 are more than memorable sentences — they are stark warnings that still resonate in today’s political and social climate.
Top 1984 Quotes by George Orwell
- “Big Brother is watching you.” ― George Orwell
- “Where there is equality there can be sanity.” — George Orwell
- “It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.” ― George Orwell
- “Until they become conscious they will never rebel.”― George Orwell
- “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.” ― George Orwell
- “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”― George Orwell
- “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”― George Orwell
- “The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” ― George Orwell
- “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”― George Orwell
- “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.”
Famous Quotes from George Orwell’s 1984
- “Sanity is not statistical.”― George Orwell
- “In the face of pain there are no heroes.”― George Orwell
- “To die hating them, that was freedom.”― George Orwell
- “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”― George Orwell
- “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”
- “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.” ― George Orwell
- “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture.”― George Orwell
- “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”― George Orwell
- “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.”― George Orwell
- “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”― George Orwell
Famous 1984 Book Quotes
- “If there is hope, it lies in the proles.” ― George Orwell, 1984
- “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.” ― George Orwell
- “It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.”― George Orwell
- “Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think.”― George Orwell
- “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
- “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes.”
- “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” ― George Orwell
- “When you make a lie sound true, and true sound plausible, you can get people to accept a huge body of falsehoods.”― George Orwell
- “They could not alter your feelings: for that you had to have a back door into your mind.”― George Orwell
- “If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”― George Orwell
- “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.” ― George Orwell, 1984
- “The choice for mankind lay between freedom and happiness and that, for the great bulk of mankind, happiness was better.”― George Orwell
- “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell
About 1984 by George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four (also published as 1984) is a dystopian novel by the English writer George Orwell. It was published on 8 June 1949.
It explores themes of surveillance, propaganda, historical revisionism, and the loss of personal freedom — making these quotes as relevant today as they were over 70 years ago.
At its heart, it tells the story of one man’s struggle for forbidden love in a world torn apart by rival powers and dominated by a ruthless regime.
Conclusion
George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four is an important classic of dystopian literature, with powerful language and unforgettable lines that shape how we discuss truth, freedom, and power.
These 1984 book quotations show the lasting relevance of Orwell’s vision — a reminder that resisting oppression and protecting individuality remain as vital today as when the novel first appeared.