1984 (1984)
John Hurt: Winston Smith
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Quotes
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Winston Smith : [reads from Goldstein's book] "In accordance to the principles of Doublethink, it does not matter if the war is not real, or when it is, that victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won. It is meant to be continuous. The essential act of modern warfare is the destruction of the produce of human labor. A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle, the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects. And its object is not victory over Eurasia or Eastasia, but to keep the very structure of society intact." Julia? Are you awake? There is truth, and there is untruth. To be in a minority of one doesn't make you mad.
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[Winston writes in his forbidden diary]
Winston Smith : [voice-over] April the 4th, 1984. To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man... greetings.
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O'Brien : How does one man assert power over another?
Winston Smith : By making him suffer.
O'Brien : Exactly. Obedience is not enough. Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Otherwise, you cannot be sure. Power is tearing human minds apart and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
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[Winston and Julia, naked, are watching the washerwoman]
Winston Smith : She's beautiful.
Julia : She's a meter across the hips, easily.
Winston Smith : That is her style of beauty. The future is hers. We are the dead.
Julia : We are the dead.
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Winston Smith : Does Big Brother even exist?
O'Brien : Of course he exists.
Winston Smith : No, I mean... does he exist like you or me?
O'Brien : You do not exist.
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Winston Smith : Look, I hate purity. Hate goodness. I don't want virtue to exist anywhere. I want everyone corrupt.
Julia : Well, I ought to suit you, then. I'm corrupt to the core.
Winston Smith : Do you like doing this? I don't mean just me...
Julia : I adore it.
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Winston Smith : [observing the Prole woman from their hideaway] The future is hers... we are the dead...
Julia : We are the dead...
Big Brother : [voice] YOU ARE THE DEAD!
[Winston and Julia look around the room, startled]
Big Brother : [voice] Remain EXACTLY where you are! Make NO move until you are ordered!
[a painting falls from wall, revealing a telescreen]
Julia : Now they can see us...
Big Brother : [voice-over from the still image on the telescreen] NOW WE CAN SEE YOU! Clasp your hands behind your heads! Stand out in the middle of the room! Stand back to back. Do NOT touch one another!
Winston Smith : [Winston and Julia immediately comply, and then hear the sound of helicopters approaching] The house is surrounded...
Big Brother : [voice] THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED!
Julia : [to Winston] I suppose we may as well say goodbye...
Big Brother : [voice] YOU MAY AS WELL SAY GOODBYE! While we're on the subject, here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head!
[the Thought Police soldiers arrive]
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Winston Smith : [voice-over] Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.
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Winston Smith : [reciting poem] Under the spreading chestnut tree / I sold you / You sold me.
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[Charrington and Winston look at an old sketch of a church]
Charrington : Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clements...
Winston Smith : What was that?
Charrington : Something old...
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[last lines]
Winston Smith : [voice-over] I love you.
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Winston Smith : It's not so much staying alive, it's staying human that's important. What counts is that we don't betray each other.
Julia : If you mean confessing, we're bound to do that. Everybody does. You can't help it.
Winston Smith : I don't mean confessing. Confessing isn't betrayal. I mean feelings. If they can make me change my feelings. If they can stop me from loving you, that would be real betrayal.
Julia : They can't do that. It's the one thing they can't do. They can torture you, make you say anything. But they can't make you believe it. They can't get inside you. They can't get to your heart.
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[Winston writes in his forbidden diary]
Winston Smith : [voice-over] If there is hope, it lies in the proles. If they could become conscious of their own strength, they would have no need to conspire. History does not matter to them.
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O'Brien : What are your feelings towards Big Brother?
Winston Smith : I hate him.
O'Brien : You must love him. It is not enough to obey him. You must love him.
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O'Brien : There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates.
Winston Smith : I am attentive to the news.
O'Brien : Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until... in a thousand years...
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Winston Smith : They got you too?
O'Brien : They got me a long time ago.
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O'Brien : Smith? I have been reading your Newspeak articles in the Times.
Winston Smith : Yes?
O'Brien : You write it very elegantly. That is not my own opinion - I was recently talking to a friend of yours who is an expert. His name... has slipped my memory for the moment. What I wanted to say is that there were one or two unwords, only very recent. Have you seen the 10th Edition of the Newspeak Dictionary?
Winston Smith : No... we're still using the 9th Edition at MinRec.
O'Brien : A few advance copies have been circulated - I have one myself. You might be interested?
Winston Smith : Yes!
O'Brien : There are some plusskillful new developments. Let me give you my address.
[gives Winston a card]
O'Brien : I am usually at home in the evenings. If I am not there, then my servant will give you the Dictionary.
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Winston Smith : [In Winston's diary]
[voice-over]
Winston Smith : Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. If that is granted all else will follow.
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Winston Smith : I know you'll fail. Something in this world... some spirit you will never overcome...
O'Brien : What is it, this principle?
Winston Smith : I don't know. The spirit of man.
O'Brien : And do you consider yourself a man?
Winston Smith : Yes.
O'Brien : If you're a man, Winston, you're the last man. Your kind is extinct. We are the inheritors. Do you realize that you are alone? You are outside history. You unexist. Get up.
[Winston gets up and O'Brien shows him his reflection in a mirror. Winston is disheveled and beaten]
O'Brien : *That* is the last man. If you are human, *that* is humanity.
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[Winston describes visiting a prostitute in the off-limit proletarian areas in his diary]
Winston Smith : [voice-over] It was three years ago, on a dark evening. Easy to slip past the patrols, and I'd gone into the proletarian areas. There was no one else on the street, and no telescreens. She said, "Two dollars," so I went with her. She had a young face, painted very thick. It was really was the paint that appealed to me: white like a mask, and bright red lips. There were no preliminaries. Standing there with the smell of dead insects and cheap perfume, I went and did it just the same.
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[Winston renders a war hero an "unperson"]
Winston Smith : [into his speaker phone] Rutherford unperson. Substitute Ogilvy. Ogilvy bio details as follows: war hero, recently killed, Malabar front. Today awarded posthumous secondary order of conspicuous merit second class.
[Winston tapes over Rutherford's face, consigning him to oblivion]
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Winston Smith : How's the Newspeak Committee?
Syme : Working overtime. Plusbig waste is in adjectives. Plusbig waste is timing the language to scientific advance.
Winston Smith : Yes...
Syme : It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. You wouldn't have seen the Dictionary 10th edition, would you Smith? It's that thick.
[illustrates thickness with fingers]
Syme : The 11th Edition will be that
[narrows fingers]
Syme : thick.
Winston Smith : So, the Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect?
Syme : The secret is to move from translation, to direct thought, to automatic response. No need for self-discipline. Language coming from here
[the larynx]
Syme : , not from here
[the brain]
Syme : .
Tillotson's Friend : [leans over from another table] Excuse me for intruding. But what you're saying is that we should be rid of the last vestiges of Goldsteinism when the language has been cleaned. I couldn't be more in agreement with you, brother.
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O'Brien : The Law of Gravity is nonsense. No such law exists. If I think I float, and you think I float, then it happens.
Winston Smith : I love you.
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Winston Smith : Who is she? All I know is that she works in the Porno Section.
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Winston Smith : [writing in his diary] There's truth and there is untruth. Freedom is the freedom to say two plus two equals four. If that is granted, all else follows.
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Winston Smith : [lying in bed, caressing Julia's naked body] Was there ever a time when this seemed ordinary?
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Julia : Look.
Winston Smith : It's a dream. I want you.
Julia : Not here. Come back to the woods. It's safer.
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Winston Smith : [voice over] It's folly, as though deliberately we move one step nearer the grave. I can't understand why she accepted the idea, she who is so careful.
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Winston Smith : Our luck can't last. You're young, look normal. You're innocent. If you keep clear of people like me then you might stay alive.
Julia : What you do, I do. I've thought it out. I'm good at staying alive.
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Winston Smith : Julia, my love, I understand how. I don't understand why.
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Winston Smith : [voice over] Everything fades into mist. The past is erased, the erasure forgotten. The lie becomes truth and then becomes a lie again.
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Winston Smith : Julia, do you think the Resistance is real?
Julia : No, none of it's real.
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Winston Smith : When will you shoot me?
O'Brien : Might take a long time. But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. And in the end - we shall shoot you.
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Winston Smith : How can I help it? How can I help what I see in front of my eyes? Two and two makes four.
O'Brien : Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five, sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once.
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Winston Smith : I stand here, a victim of the influence of Emmanuel Goldstein. Guilty on all counts. I'm glad I was caught. I was mentally deranged. Now I am cured. I ask only for you to accept my love of our leader. I ask only to be shot while my mind is still clean. A glorious victory!
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Winston Smith : I accuse myself of the following crimes. I have seduced Party members of both sexes. I've been to the proletarian areas. I deliberately contracted syphilis in order to spread the disease...
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Winston Smith : I told them about you, too. Thoughtcrime, sexcrime, all your treachery.
