Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.

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.

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 terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power.

And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters inside your skull.

For the first time it was perceived that if you want to keep a secret you must also hide it from yourself. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty, and then we shall fill you with ourselves. If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable - what then?

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense. And what was terrifying was not that they would kill you for thinking otherwise, but that they might be right. For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable—what then?

The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.

Big Brother is Watching You.

George Orwell 1984