# Quote — George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four

> On the sixth day of Hate Week, after the processions, the speeches, the shouting, the singing, the banners, the posters, the films, the waxworks, the rolling of drums and squealing of trumpets, the tramp of marching feet, the grinding of the caterpillars of tanks, the roar of massed planes, the booming of guns — after six days of this, when the great orgasm was quivering to its climax and the general hatred of Eurasia had boiled up into such delirium that if the crowd could have got their hands on the 2,000 Eurasian war-criminals who were to be publicly hanged on the last day of the proceedings, they would unquestionably have torn them to pieces — at just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.

- 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_9) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/george-orwell/nineteen-eighty-four/on-the-sixth

## 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)