Philip Rahv - "This novel is the best antidote to the totalitarian disease
that any writer has so far produced."
Frederick Warburg - 'This is amongst the most terrifying
books I have ever read'
Warburg - 'Orwell had no hope, at least he allows his reader no hope,
no tiny flickering candlelight of hope'
Tom Hopkinson “Orwell has imagined nothing new…
His world of 1984 is the wartime world of 1944, but dirtier and more cruel”
Bernard Crick - “It's not a prophecy,
it's a warning”
Orwell - “Every line of serious work I have written since 1936 has been written, directly of indirectly,
against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism, as I understand it”
Lynskey - “During the Cold War, it was a book about totalitarianism. In the 1980s it
became a warning about invasive technology. Today, it is most of all a defence of truth”
Conheenyl - “It highlights the importance
of resisting mass control and oppression”
D. J. Taylor - “alone or relatively friendless, at the centre of a hostile world from which they
cannot escape and where their every movement is subject to constant surveillance.”
Daniel Bell - "A human society stripped of
the last shreds of community"
Bell - "Fear and anxiety
the daily staple of life"
E M Forster - "Big brother also lurks behind Churchill and
any leader whom propaganda utilises or invents"
Karina Jakubowicz - “Reading in Oldspeak means we're immersed in the language of
the proles and the rebels, and we're automatically on their side.”
Lisa Mullen - “There is no resting place: we never find a place where we can find a
sense of relief from the grimness and lack of freedom.”
John Bowen - “Why is Winston so important that they spend
all that effort on him? It's not clear, unless he is the last man.”
Dorian Lynskey - '[O'Brien] is both real and
a part of Winston: his shadow self.”
Schellenberg - 'This big brother society is too
well-constructed to break apart in the face of one mans resistance'
Podhoretz - “Orwell's ruling passion was the fear
and hatred of totalitarianism”
Bossche - “It contains no prophetic declaration
only a simple warning to mankind”
Berkes - “Language becomes a
method of mind control”
Topham - “Language is degraded to such a state
that it only serves the government”
Emily John - '1984 plays with our
deepest fears'
Pimlott - “Sexual happiness is the
biggest threat to the system”
Lynch - "There are many parallels between...
Big Brother and Stalin"
Orwell - "Two and two could make 5
if the Fuhrer wished it."
Orwell - "The invisible Stalin is worshipped
in terms that would make Nero blush"