The novel 1984 is author George Orwell’s cautionary tale of a future totalitarian government that uses mass surveillance to redefine truth and tyrannize citizens. Once a work of fiction, it now reads like a disturbingly accurate picture of the present day. From the left’s rejection of objective truths to the media’s manipulation of language, 2024 is looking increasingly like 1984. Here are 15 instances demonstrating how quotes from Orwell’s nightmarish dystopian masterwork have become descriptors of reality.
1. Don’t Believe Your Own Eyes
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
2. Endless Wars
“They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”
3. Separating Babies From Mothers At Birth
“Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution … children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen.”
4. Hatred Of Purity And Goodness
“I hate purity, I hate goodness! I don’t want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone to be corrupt to the bones.”
5. The News Lies
“… one knows the news is all lies anyway.”
6. Destruction Of The Family
“The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account. They had played a similar trick with the instinct of parenthood. The children, on the other hand, were
systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police.”
7. Political Correctness
“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.”
8. Persecution Of Political Opponents
“Power is not a means; it is an end … The object of persecution is persecution.”
9. The Innocent Are Suffering
“How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?“ Winston thought.
“By making him suffer,” he said.
“Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own?
10. Truth Is Redefined
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.”
11. Hypocrisy From Government Agencies
“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.”
12. Contradicting Beliefs
“DOUBLETHINK means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
13. Dates Altered
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.”
14. No Trust
“We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends.”
15. Statistics Are Lies
“The fabulous statistics continued to pour out of the telescreen. As compared with last year there was more food, more clothes, more houses, more furniture, more cooking-pots, more fuel, more ships, more helicopters, more books, more babies — more of everything except disease, crime, and insanity.”
Monroe Harless is a summer intern at The Federalist. She is a recent graduate of the University of Georgia with degrees in journalism and political science.
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