# Quote — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

> Do not imagine that you will save yourself, Winston, however completely you surrender to us. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is for ever. Understand that in advance. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you could not recover, if you lived a thousand years. Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves.

- 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_2) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/do-not-imagine

## 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)