It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
June 8, 1949: Nineteen Eighty-Four is published.
George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel was the product of his abhorrence of both Communism and fascism - he claimed that the latter term was “almost entirely meaningless” and that Communism (as put in practice by the Russians) and fascism were two sides of the same coin. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, his personal warning against any and all forms of totalitarianism and extremism, Orwell has the main antagonist describe the Nazi and Russian Communist regimes as less successful, misled versions of Oceania and its ruling ideology “Ingsoc” (Read more about the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four here).
Nineteen Eighty-four was an immediate success upon publication; apparently, even Winston Churchill (for whom the protagonist is named) claimed to have read it twice. At one time the most widely-translated English-language novel ever, Nineteen Eighty-Four brought terms like “Big Brother”, “Thoughtcrime” and “Thought Police”, “Doublethink”, and, of course, “Orwellian” into the popular lexicon of a post-war world wary of creeping totalitarianism.
More quotes:
Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
Who controls the past… controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
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 power is power.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it.