George Orwell on "films, football, beer and gambling"

So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance.  Left to themselves, like cattle turned loose upon the plains of Argentina, they had reverted to a style of life that appeared to be natural to them, a sort of ancestral pattern...  Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds.  To keep them in control was not difficult...  All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working hours or shorter rations.  And when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.

~ George Orwell, 1984

Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show
February 13, 2022

George Orwell on love

They fear love because it creates a world they can't control.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on falsifying history

Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the 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.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell anticipates the political Left circa 2021

Now I will tell you the answer to my question.  It is this.  The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.  We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.  What pure power means you will understand presently.  We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing.  All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites.  The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.  We are not like that.  We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.  Power is not a means; it is an end.  One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.  The object of persecution is persecution.  The object of torture is torture.  The object of power is power.  Now you begin to understand me.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on the future

If you want to picture the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever.  Power is not a means, it is an end.

George Orwell, 1984

(Addendum: In posting this quote and photo, I rushed to judgment along with the mob, viewing the events through my own ideological lens.  For an alternative view on what likely caused the death of George Floyd - drug overdose - see here.)

Minneapolis police officer kills George Floyd

George Orwell on the importance of history

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on the corruption of language

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on doublethink

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

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on dedication to truth

Being in a minority, even in 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.

~ George Orwell, 1984

George Orwell on the intoxication of power

Always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. 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 - forever.

~ George Orwell, 1984