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“Oceanic society rests ultimately on the belief that Big Brother is omnipotent and that the Party is infallible. But since in reality Big Brother is not omnipotent and the party is not infallible, there is need for an unwearying, moment-to-moment flexibility in the treatment of facts. The keyword here is BLACKWHITE. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“Just remember what you’re seeing and what you're reading is not what’s happening.”
― President Donald Trump

“What if, I never tire of asking, we said 'Secret Council' instead of the archaic and therefore cuddly 'Privy Council'?”
― Christopher Hitchens

“After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good��, for instance. If you have a word like ‘good��, what need is there for a word like ‘bad��? ‘Ungood�� will do just as well—better, because it’s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good��, what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent�� and ‘splendid�� and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood�� covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplusgood�� if you want something stronger still" (51).”
― George Orwell, 1984

“The truth? What's that? Don't you know that the day has come when the truth is what we care to make it?”
― Iain Crichton Smith, Consider the Lilies

“In the latter half of the twentieth century, two visionary books cast their shadows over our futures.

One was George Orwell's 1949 novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, with its horrific vision of a brutal mind-controlling totalitarian state - a book that gave us Big Brother, and Thoughtcrime and Newspeak and the Memory Hole and the torture palace called the Ministry of Love, and the discouraging spectacle of a boot grinding into the human face forever.

The other was Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), which proposed a different and Softer Form of Totalitarianism - one of conformity achieved through engineered, bottle-grown babies and Hypnotic Persuasion rather than through brutality; of boundless consumption that keeps the wheels of production turning and of officially enforced promiscuity that does away with sexual frustration; of a pre-ordained caste system ranging from a highly intelligent managerial class to a subgroup of dimwitted serfs programmed to love their menial work; and of Soma, a drug that confers instant bliss with no side effects.

Which template would win, we wondered?

....Would it be possible for both of these futures - the hard and the soft - to exist a the same time, in the same place? And what would that be like?

....Thoughtcrime and the boot grinding into the human face could not be got rid of so easily, after all. The Ministry of Love is back with us...

....those of us still pottering along on the earthly plane - and thus still able to read books - are left with Brave New World. How does it stand up, seventy-five years later? And how close have we come, in real life, to the society of vapid consumers, idle pleasure-seekers, inner-space trippers, and programmed conformists that it presents?

- excerpts from Margaret Atwood's introduction (2007) to Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Пропаганда называет диссидентов «контрреволюционерами», поскольку революция на Кубе типа продолжается («нет у революции конца», помним-помним). Стало быть, люди, желающие перемен, это здесь контрреволюционеры.
А те, которые хотят оставаться у власти, в роскоши реквизированных особняков через шестьдесят лет после ее захвата �� это революционеры!
Тут главное �� не перепутать.”
― Виктор Шендерович