1984 Book Quotes & Sayings

Do you like to read?" I asked, pointing at my little shelf.
Moses eyed my books. "Yes."
His answer surprised me. Maybe it was his reputation as a gang banging delinquent. Maybe it was because of the way he looked. But he didn't seem like the type who enjoyed sitting quietly with a book.
"What's your favorite book?" I sounded suspicious and his eyes tightened.
"I like Catcher in the Rye. The Outsiders, 1984, Of Mice and Men, Dune, Starship Troopers, Lord of the Rings. Anything by Tom Clancy or JK Rowling."
He said JK Rowling quickly, like he didn't want to admit to being a Potter fan. But I was stunned. — Amy Harmon

The have a good friend is one of the greatest delights of life. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We say, "Well, the only answer is ... " or, "If you would just ... " Whatever follows these two statements narrows the choices right there. It gets the vision right down close to the ground so that you don't see anything happening outside. Humans tend not to see over a long range. Now we are required, in these generations, to have a longer range view of what we inflict on the world around us. This is where, I think, science fiction is helping. I don't think that the mere writing of such a book as Brave New World or 1984 prevents those things which are portrayed in those books from happening. But I do think they alert us to that possibility and make that possibility less likely. They make us aware that we may be going in that direction. — Frank Herbert

About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror.
Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura. — Irving Howe

I didn't want him to go home and leave me to wrestle my demons alone. — Heather Demetrios

A lot of people might define a life well lived by how much is in the bank. I feel like it's how much you laugh. — Jill Kargman

Who are these evil ones? In 1984, the evil one was called Goldstein. Orwell was writing a grim parody. But these people running the United States mean what they say. If I were a teacher, I would recommend that all my students very hurriedly read most of Orwell's books, especially 1984 and Animal Farm, because then they'd begin to understand the world we live in. — John Pilger

I can do Shakespeare, Ibsen, English accents, Irish accents, no accent, stand on my head, tap dance, sing, look 17 or look 70. — Diane Ladd

People ask what those women saw in me. Let's face it, I wasn't a bad-looking stud. But that's not it. It's the music; it's standing up there under the lights. A lot of women just flip; looks have nothing to do with it. You call Mick Jagger good-looking? — Artie Shaw

A Perl program is correct if it gets the job done before your boss fires you. — Larry Wall

To sing about freedom and to pray for its coming is not enough. Freedom must be actualized in history by oppressed peoples who accept the intellectual challenge to analyze the world for the purpose of changing it. — James H. Cone

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle? — Craig Ferguson

What book(s) changed your life and why? I could probably list books for days, so I'll just list a few favorites: The Giver by Lois Lowry, Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, the Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate, 1984 by George Orwell, the Bible, Gilead by Marilynne Robinson, and Juliet by Andras Visky (which is a play, but I think it still counts). — Veronica Roth

Ender's Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984 ... It will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute. — Orson Scott Card

As my editor had no desire to frighten readers with the Romanian pages, he had them translated and published the whole thing in French in 1984. It was only years later, in Romania, that I was able to publish the book as I wrote it. — Dumitru Tepeneag

What distinguishes the historian from the collector of historical facts is generalization. — Edward Hallett Carr

It would be up to FBI profilers and the investigative support unit at Quantico, Virginia, to penetrate this criminal's mind. John Douglas pioneered behavioral profiling for the FBI. He and others developed the investigative tool from over 25 years of interviews with convicted killers, arsonists, rapists, and bombers. John Douglas: "When someone asks for a profile, what they are looking for are characteristics which include a gender, age, race, sometimes body typing, educational level, and occupational type. — John Humphrey

In the first place, just as income tax returns allow us to study changes in income inequality, estate tax returns enable us to study changes in the inequality of wealth. — Thomas Piketty

Wilke subscribed to the principles laid out in a seminal book about constraints in manufacturing, Eliyahu M. Goldratt's The Goal, published in 1984. — Brad Stone

In the context of 1948, 1984 seemed dreadfully convincing. But tyrants, after all, are mortal and circumstances change. Recent developments in Russia and recent advances in science and technology have robbed Orwell's book of some of its gruesome verisimilitude. A nuclear war will, of course, make nonsense of everybody's predictions. But, assuming for the moment that the Great Powers can somehow refrain from destroying us, we can say that it now looks as though the odds were more in favor of something like Brave New World than of something like 1984. — Aldous Huxley

Architecture should be rooted in the past, and yet be part of our own time and forward looking. — Moshe Safdie

But it was my first evidence that Diane lived in a world even bigger than the Big House, a world where grief and joy moved as ponderously as tides, with the weight of an ocean behind them. — Robert Charles Wilson

For many, the recent disclosure of massive warrantless surveillance programs of all citizens by the Obama administration has brought back memories of George Orwell's '1984.' Another Orwell book seems more apt as the White House and its allies try to contain the scandal: 'Animal Farm.' — Jonathan Turley

Orwell wasn't right about where society was in 1984. We haven't turned into that sort of surveillance society. But that may be, at least in small part, because of his book. The notion that ubiquitous surveillance and state manipulation of the media is evil is deeply engrained in us. — Ramez Naam

I find a tattered copy of 1984. I open the book and read a little. Of course it is fiction, but the author gets a few things right - the control, the scrutiny, the feeling that nothing can be spontaneous, that the slightest move carries consequences for your future. It evokes a feeling I haven't experienced in a long time, a sense that, even though you have a great job and house, there is no safe place to turn. The — Adam Johnson

I'm looking forward to playing the meatier roles you get in your 30s. The early 20s can be a hard time for an actress - it's always bombshell or romantic lead. The good stuff you can really sink your teeth into comes later. — Jessica Marais

I read '1984' at a precocious age, like 8, and when I did the math, I realized that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, was born the same year I was, 1957. I read that book over and over again with the 1960s as a backdrop: anti-war and anti-bomb protests and this general pervasive sense of doom. — Elizabeth Hand

The life doesn't simply get erased. It gets imprinted and remembered. — Judith Butler