Syme was a philologist, a specialist in Newspeak. Indeed, he was one of the enormous team of experts now engaged in compiling the Eleventh Edition of the Newspeak dictionary. - P45
In an intellectual way, Syme was venomously orthodox. - P44
We‘re destroying words-scores of them, hundreds of them, every day. We‘re cutting the language down to the bone. The Eleventh Edition won‘t contain a single word that will become obsolete before the year 2050. - P45
It‘s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn‘t only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other words? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good,‘ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,‘ what need is there for a word like ‘bad‘? ‘Ungood‘ will do just as well-better, because it‘s an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,‘ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent‘ and ‘splendid‘ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood‘ covers the meaning, or ‘doubleplus-good‘ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of New-speak there‘ll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words-in reality, only one word. - P46
Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year? - P46
"Don‘t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten. Already, in the Eleventh Edition, we‘re not far from that point. But the process will still be continuing long after you and I are dead. Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller. Even now, of course, there‘s no reason or excuse for committing thoughtcrime. It‘s merely a question of self-discipline, reality-control. But in the end there won‘t be any need even for that. The Revolution will be complete when the language is perfect. Newspeak is Ingsoc and Ingsoc is Newspeak, - P47
"The proles are not human beings," he said carelessly. "By 2050-earlier, probably-all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. - P47
Orthodoxy means not thinking-not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness. - P47
"There is a word in Newspeak," said Syme. "I don‘t know whether you know it: duckspeak, to quack like a duck. It is one of those interesting words that have two contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it is abuse; applied to someone you agree with, it is praise." Unquestionably Syme will be vaporized, - P49
Why should one feel it to be intolerable unless one had some kind of ancestral memory that things had once been different? - P52
There was even a word for it in (Newspeak):facecrime, it was called. - P54
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