Nineteen Eighty-Four
1984
O'Brien: If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.
Winston Smith: Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.
(Winston writes in his forbidden diary) Winston Smith: April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man... greetings.
Syme: Beautiful thing, the destruction of words.
(Winston writes in his forbidden diary) Winston Smith: If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them.
(Winston describes visiting a prostitute in the off-limit proletarian areas) Winston Smith: It was three years ago, on a dark evening. Easy to slip the patrols, I had gone into the proletarian areas. There was no one else on the street, and no telescreens. She said, "Two dollars.", so I went with her. She had a young face, painted very thick. Really, t'was the paint that appealed to me: white like a mask, and bright red lips. No preliminaries. Standing there with the smell of dead insects and cheap perfume, I went and did it anyway.
(Winston renders a war hero an "unperson") Winston Smith: Rutherford unperson. Substitute Ogilvy. Ogilvy biog details as follows: war hero, recently killed, Malabar front. Today awarded posthumous secondary order of conspicuous merit second class. (Winston tapes over Rutherford's face, consigning him to oblivion)
Winston Smith: (reciting poem) Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you / You sold me.
(Charrington and Winston look at an old sketch of a church) Charrington: Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clements... Winston Smith: What was that? Charrington: Something old...
Winston Smith: Look, I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt. Julia: Well, I ought to suit you, then. I'm corrupt to the core. Winston Smith: Do you like doing this? I don't mean just me... Julia: I adore it.
O'Brien: What are your feelings towards Big Brother? Winston Smith: I hate him. O'Brien: You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.
(last lines) Winston Smith: I love you.
(first lines) Big Brother: (voiceover) This is our land. A land of peace and of plenty. A land of harmony and hope. This is our land. Oceania. These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?
(Winston and Julia are watching the washerwoman) Winston Smith: She's beautiful. Julia: She's a metre across the hips, easily. Winston Smith: That is her style of beauty.
O'Brien: We shall meet in the place were there is no darkness.
Winston Smith: We are the dead.
O'Brien: There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates. Winston Smith: I am attentive to the news. O'Brien: Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until... in a thousand years...
Winston Smith: It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important. What counts is that we don't betray each other. Julia: If you mean confessing, we're bound to do that. Everybody does. You can't help it. Winston Smith: I don't mean confessing. Confessing isn't betrayal. I mean feelings. If they can make me change my feelings. If they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal. Julia: They can't do that. It's the one thing they can't do. They can torture you, make you say anything. But they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you. They can't get to your heart.
Winston Smith: They got you too? O'Brien: They got me a long time ago.