1984 노트

 

For whom, for what, was that bird singing? No mate, no rival was watching it. What made it sit at the edge of the lonely wood and pour its music into nothingness? (124)
– 인간의 역사에서 얼마나 많은 사람들이 더 나은 삶을 위해, 인간이 노예나 기계가 아닌 단지 인간이 되는 세상을 만들기 위해 알아주는 이 없이 사라져갔는가. 

If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot? (133)
– 신나치의 출현, 광적인 집단주의, 사회의 모든 폭력은 자신의 내부에서 행복을 찾을 수 없기 때문이다.

She would not accept it as a law of nature that the individual is always defeated. - She did not understand that there was no such thing as happiness, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that the only victory lay in the far future, long after you were dead, that from the moment of declaring of war on the Party it was better to think yourself as a corpse. (135)

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I know, of course, that the past is falsified, but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don’t know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories. (155)

If they could make me stop loving you-that would be the real betrayal. - They can make you say anything-anything-but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you. – If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can’t have any result whatever, you’ve beaten them. – With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. (166)
– 과학의 발달로 인간의 생각까지 읽어낼 수 있게 된다면 어떻게 될 것인가?

Indeed, so long as they are not permitted to have standards of comparison, they never even become aware that they are oppressed. (207)
– 북유럽 사회민주주의 국가들의 동반성장 정책이나 OECD국가들의 평균에 턱없이 못 미치는 사회복지지출과 조세부담 등에 대한 일반 사람들의 인식 부족, 그리고 무엇보다 지역주의와 반공주의의 여전한 강력한 지배 속에서 진보 정치와 이론들이 무시되는 상황은 사람들이 비교할 잣대를 갖는 것을 어렵게 만든다.

The party is not concerned with perpetuating its blood but with perpetuating itself. Who wields power is not important, provided that the hierarchical structure remains always the same. (210)

Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. – Sanity is not statistical. (218)

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood. (252)

Not merely to extract your confession, nor to punish you! Shall I tell you why we have brought you here? To cure you! To make you sane! (253)

The first thing you must realize is that power is collective. The individual only has power in so far as he ceases to be an individual. – The second thing for you to realize is that power is power over human beings. Over the body-but, above all, over the mind. (265)
– 인간의 마음을 지배하는 것이 진정한 권력이다. 권력이 원하는 바를 스스로 원하도록 만드는 권력, Joshep Nye의 메타권력과 일맥상통한다. 신자유주의의 경쟁과 성장 논리는 우리의 마음을 지배하는 권력이 되었다.

From now onwards he must not only think right; he must feel right, dream right. And all the while he must keep his hatred locked up inside him like a ball of matter which was part of himself and yet unconnected with the rest of him, a kind of cyst. One day they would decide to shoot him. –In that time the world inside him could turn over. And then suddenly the camouflage would be down and bang! would go the batteries of his hatred. Hatred would fill him like an enormous roaring flame. – The heretical thought would be unpunished, unrepented, out of their reach forever. They would have blown a hole in their own perfection. To die hating them, that was freedom. (281)

The struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. (298)