1984 Quotes: 40 Timeless Wisdoms from George Orwell's Masterpiece

George Orwell 1984 — The 1984 is one of the most popular works of George Orwell. (Photo: Edward Eyer/Pexels)... Selengkapnya

Liputan6.com, Jakarta Some words have the power to change how we think about the world around us. The famous 1984 quotes from George Orwell's novel continue to influence people more than 70 years after the book was first published. These powerful sentences make readers think deeply about freedom, truth, and control in society.

The novel 1984 tells the story of Winston Smith, a man living under a harsh government system. George Orwell wrote about a world where the government watches everything people do and controls what they think. Many 1984 quotes from the book show how dangerous it can be when leaders have too much power over their people.

People around the world still read and discuss the book today because many 1984 quotes feel very real in our modern times. The story warns us about problems we still face today, like government control, fake news, and loss of privacy. The book remains popular because its messages about freedom and truth never get old.

In this article, we have collected some of the best 1984 quotes from Orwell's masterpiece, Tuesday (22/7/2025). From these quotes, we can learn the timeless wisdom that is still relevant today.

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The Best 1984 Quotes from the George Orwell's Masterpiece

1. "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."

2. “The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”

3. “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

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

5. “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

6. “If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

7. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

8. “But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

9. “We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.”

10. “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

11. “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

12. “If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.”

13. “In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

14. “Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”

15. “The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.”

16. “It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words.”

17. “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”

18. “Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”

19. “Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”

20. “Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull. ”

21. “We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them.”

22. “Confession is not betrayal. What you say or do doesn't matter; only feelings matter. If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal.”

23. “It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones.”

24. “To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one’s lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”

25. “If you kept the small rules you could break the big ones.”

26. “Sanity is not statistical.”

27. “What can you do, thought Winston, against the lunatic who is more intelligent than yourself, who gives your arguments a fair hearing and then simply persists in his lunacy?”

28. “Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

29. “To die hating them, that was freedom.”

30. “Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever… And remember that it is for ever. The face will always be there to be stamped upon.”

31. “Where there is equality, there can be sanity.”

32. “There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

33. “Of pain you could wish only one thing: that it should stop. Nothing in the world was so bad as physical pain. In the face of pain there are no heroes.”

34. “The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

35. “We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

36. “Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”

37. “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”

38. ‘ “Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”’

39. ‘ “The masses never revolt of their own accord, and they never revolt merely because they are oppressed. Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed.”’

40. “The consequences of every act are included in the act itself.”