The unforgivable crime was promiscuity between Party members. But-though this was one of the crimes that the accused in the great purges invariably confessed to-it was difficult to imagine any such thing actually happening.
The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. - P57
If there is hope [wrote Winston] it lies in the proles.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. - P60
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become con-scious. - P61
But simultaneously, true to the principles of doublethink, the Party taught that the proles were natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals, by the application of a few simple rules. - P61
The sexual puritanism of the Party was not imposed upon them. Promiscuity went unpunished; divorce was permitted. For that matter, even religious worship would have been permitted if the proles had shown any sign of needing or wanting it. They were beneath suspicion. As the Party slogan put it: "Proles and animals are free." - P62
Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. - P64
But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. - P60
How could you tell how much of it was lies? It might be true that the average human being was better off now than he had been before the Revolution. - P63
Was the Party‘s hold upon the past less strong, he wondered, because a piece of evidence which existed no longer had once existed? - P68
Very likely the confessions had been rewritten and rewrit-ten until the original facts and dates no longer had the smallest significance. The past not only changed, but changed continuously. - P68
I understand HOW: I do not understand WHY. - P68
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy, The heresy of heresies was common sense. - P69
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. 2+2 = 4 - P69
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