# Quote — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

> At the age of three Comrade Ogilvy had refused all toys except a drum, a sub-machine gun, and a model helicopter. At six — a year early, by a special relaxation of the rules — he had joined the Spies, at nine he had been a troop leader. At eleven he had denounced his uncle to the Thought Police after overhearing a conversation which appeared to him to have criminal tendencies. At seventeen he had been a district organizer of the Junior Anti-Sex League. At nineteen he had designed a hand-grenade which had been adopted by the Ministry of Peace and which, at its first trial, had killed thirty-one Eurasian prisoners in one burst. At twenty-three he had perished in action. Pursued by enemy jet planes while flying over the Indian Ocean with important dispatches, he had weighted his body with his machine gun and leapt out of the helicopter into deep water, dispatches and all — an end, said Big Brother, which it was impossible to contemplate without feelings of envy.

- Author: [George Orwell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell.md)
- Book: [Nineteen Eighty-Four](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Chapter_4) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/at-the-age

## More from this book

> 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 torture is torture. The object of power is power.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/we-know-that.md)

> "Sometimes," she said, "they threaten you with something — something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, 'Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.' And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself that way. You WANT it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself."

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/sometimes-she-said.md)

> Stupidity was as necessary as intelligence, and as difficult to attain.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/stupidity-was-as-necessary.md)