Thought Police Quotes

The most gifted of [the Proletariate], who might possibly become a nuclei of discontent, are simply marked down by the Thought Police and eliminated. ~ George Orwell

I use African-American, because I teach African Studies as well as African-American Studies, so it's easy, neat and convenient. But sometimes, when you're in a barber shop, somebody'll say, "Did you see what that Negro did?" A lot of people slip in and out of different terms effortlessly, and I don't think the thought police should be on patrol. ~ Henry Louis Gates

If the thought police come to Armitage Baptist Church, we will meet them at the door respectfully, unflinchingly, willing to die on this hill, holding a copy of the Sacred Scriptures in one hand and a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the other. ~ Todd Starnes

I wouldn't want to have the thought police going to people's homes, dictating what they teach their children. I don't want to be Big Brotherish. I would hate that. ~ Richard Dawkins

The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace and carelessness it seemed to annihilate a whole culture, a whole system of thought, as though Big Brother and the Party and the Thought Police could all be swept into nothingness by a single splendid movement of the arm. That too was a gesture belonging to the ancient time. Winston woke up with the word 'Shakespeare' on his lips. ~ George Orwell

You had to live - did live, from habit that became instinct - in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. ~ Anonymous

We live in oppressive times. We have, as a nation, become our own thought police; but instead of calling the process by which we limit our expression of dissent and wonder 'censorship,' we call it 'concern for commercial viability. ~ David Mamet

Children, on the other hand, were systematically turned against their parents and taught to spy on them and report their deviations. The family had become in effect an extension of the Thought Police. It was ~ George Orwell

There is no possibility that any perceptible change will happen within our own lifetime. We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing. It might be a thousand years. At present nothing is possible except to extend the area of sanity little by little. We cannot act collectively. We can only spread our knowledge outwards from individual to individual, generation after generation. In the face of the Thought Police, there is no other way. ~ George Orwell

April the 4th, 1984.
To the past, or to the future. To an age when thought is free. From the Age of Big Brother, from the Age of the Thought Police, from a dead man - greetings! ~ George Orwell

As I've already mentioned, 1984 and I were getting on famously. A no-frills setup, run without sentiment, snobbery or cultural favouritism, Airstrip One seemed like my kind of town. (I saw myself as an idealistic young corporal in the Thought Police.) ~ Martin Amis

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

So why don't they face us ... examine our evidence, debate, talk ... act like real historians instead of thought-police? Why shut us out of the media, pass laws against our speaking, persecute us, sue us, and vilify us? ~ Randolph D. Calverhall

Religion is run by thought police. 'Obey. Listen. This is what you do. Don't ask questions. Go die for your country.' The spirituality says, 'Okay, you can die for your country, but know what you're doing while you're doing it.' ~ Tommy Chong

It was not the fault of Christian censors or a theological thought-police that the "other" Gospels were criticized and rejected. The "other" Gospels were not recognizable as "gospel," and they failed to capture the hearts, minds, and imaginations of Christians in the worldwide church. The proof of this is the limited number of extant manuscripts for many of these "other" Gospels and the fact that many Jesus books were not known beyond their own immediate circles. The exclusion of other Gospels was not the result of the victory of the orthodox. It was rather based on an objective claim as to who more properly transmitted the teaching of Jesus and the Apostles. In the end, the reason the "other" Gospels lost out is that they simply failed to convince the majority of their antiquity and authenticity as stories of Jesus. ~ Michael F. Bird

Philosophical argument, trying to get someone to believe something whether he wants to believe it or not, is not, I have held, a nice way to behave towards someone; also it does not fit the original motivation for studying or entering philosophy. That motivation is puzzlement, curiousity, a desire to understand, not a desire to produce uniformity of belief. Most people do not want to become thought-police. The philosophical goal of explanation rather than proof not only is morally better, it is more in accord with one's philosophical motivation. ~ Robert Nozick

Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. ~ George Carlin

heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had ~ George Orwell

The Thought Police: To censor and protect. ~ Craig Bruce

Once the government can demand of a publisher the names of the purchasers of his publications, the free press as we know it disappears. Then the spectre of a government agent will look over the shoulder of everyone who reads. The purchase of a book or pamphlet today may result in a subpoena tomorrow. Fear of criticism goes with every person into the bookstall. The subtle, imponderable pressures of the orthodox lay hold. Some will fear to read what is unpopular, what the powers-that-be dislike. When the light of publicity may reach any student, any teacher, inquiry will be discouraged. The books and pamphlets that are critical of the administration, that preach an unpopular policy in domestic or foreign affairs, that are in disrepute in the orthodox school of thought will be suspect and subject to investigation. The press and its readers will pay a heavy price in harassment. But that will be minor in comparison with the menace of the shadow which government will cast over literature that does not follow the dominant party line. If the lady from Toledo can be required to disclose what she read yesterday and what she will read tomorrow, fear will take the place of freedom in the libraries, book stores, and homes of the land. Through the harassment of hearings, investigations, reports, and subpoenas government will hold a club over speech and over the press."

[United States v. Rumely, 345 U.S. 41 (1953)] ~ William O. Douglas

I think that when we start thought-policing people and idea-policing people, then that's crossing a line. And I think, you know, everybody's so afraid of this imaginary line of thought police that they forget their own personal safety. ~ Ashton Kutcher

Women can say anything they want to men, or blacks to whites, with impunity. But strong words in the other direction can bring down on students the wrath of the campus thought police - as well as punishments that can extend to suspension or expulsion. ~ Thomas Sowell

The one thing about kids is that you never really know exactly what they're thinking or how they're seeing. After writing about kids, which is a little bit like putting the experience under a magnifying glass, you realize you have no idea how you thought as a kid. I've come to the conclusion that most of the things that we remember about our childhood are lies. We all have memories that stand out from when we were kids, but they're really just snapshots. You can't remember how you reacted because your whole head is different when you stand aside. ~ Stephen King

I thought I would write non-fiction. I thought I would enter the New York literary scene as copy editor, work my way up, and then write my own books. ~ Michael Gruber

I thought, What a miserable life he's had, having to hide his religion, his name, just to get a job
as a driver - and he is a good driver, no question of it, a far better one than I will ever be.Part of
me wanted to get up and apologize to him right there and say, You go and be a driver in Delhi.
You never did anything to hurt me. Forgive me, brother.
I turned to the other side, farted, and went back to sleep. ~ Aravind Adiga

Excuse me?' A beaming female face swims into focus. A woman has touched her on the arm and Grace is disconcerted, as though someone on television waved at her. She feels so remote from the world, from normal people, she thought she was invisible. ~ Liane Moriarty

It's not just the thought we think that matter; it's how we think them, how long we think them, and how often we think them. A thought has to be thought again and again in order for it to embed in our brains. So to fade a thought or get rid of it altogether, stop thinking it. ~ Toni Sorenson

I thought I was bulletproof or Superman there for a while. I thought I'd never run out of nerve. Never. ~ Evel Knievel

I thought maybe a day was coming when I'd stop constantly worrying about how to live. Maybe at some point I'd just start living, no questions asked. ~ John Corey Whaley

Calvin clears his throat. "Do you have anything to drink?"

Booze. Right. This is the perfect situation for some booze. I jump up, and he laughs, awkwardly. "I should have thought to get champagne or something."

"You bought the dinner," I remind him. "Obviously the champagne was on my list and I dropped the ball."

Pulling a bottle of vodka from the freezer, I set it on the counter and then realize I have nothing to mix it with. And I finished the last beer the other night.

"I have vodka."

He smiles valiantly. "Straight-up vodka it is."

"It's Stoli."

"Straight-up mediocre vodka it is," he amends with a cheeky wink.

His phone buzzes, and it sets off a weird, giddy reaction in my chest. We both have full lives beyond this apartment, which remain complete mysteries to each other. One difference between us is that Calvin likely doesn't care about my life outside of this. Yet I care intensely about his. Having him here feels like finding the key to unlock a mysterious chest that's been sitting in the corner of my bedroom for a year.

Buzz. Buzz.

Looking up, I meet his eyes. They're wide, almost as if he's not sure whether to answer.

"You can get it," I assure him. "It's okay."

His face darkens with a flush. "I . . . don't think I should."

"It's your phone! Of course it's okay to answer it."

"It's not . . ."

Buzz. Buzz.
Christina Lauren

I left the court feeling sure that Rose West would never walk free again. That thought made me happy. ~ Stephen Richards

I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career. ~ Nora Roberts

Just after I dedicated my life to service, I felt that I could no longer accept more than I need while others in the world have less than they need. This moved me to bring my life down to need level. I thought it would be difficult. I thought it would entail a great many hardships, but I was quite wrong. Instead of hardships, I found a wonderful sense of peace and joy, and a conviction that unnecessary possessions are only unnecessary burdens. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Floating past the Soyuz TV screen, I noticed we were over the Pacific, off the Chilean coast. At the window, I saw few lights: fishing boats, I thought. Then they resolved themselves: the Southern Cross. I was looking at a constellation in the night sky, not the sea! It was a strange delight to be that disconcerted while simultaneously at ease. ~ Chris Hadfield

She felt sweat bead on her forehead, and dug a fingernail into her thumb to stop herself from weeping. She thought about her husband, John, and her two girls. She cursed herself for agreeing to visit the hospital and for not heeding the advice of the deputy director and Tom Dupree. But she still had the presence of mind to know that that wouldn't help her now, so she did her best to concentrate on counting her breaths.
Two minutes later, she decided to survive by whatever means and fought to focus on something more positive to assuage her escalating fear. She told herself that her people would be looking for her, that roadblocks had been set up. They could follow her, after all, at US Air Force bases, via drones, or whatever else they had that even she didn't know about.
Then she did her best to remember what Tom had told her about how to respond if she were ever kidnapped. Do not resist them, she thought. Act upon all reasonable instructions without complaint. Refrain from making retaliatory threats or unrealistic promises. Attempt to build up a rapport, but slowly to avoid it being considered contrived.
But then she began to waver again. For now she was in the hands of men with no humanity, who had snuffed out life as most people sprayed mosquitoes or swatted bugs.
She knew her see-saw emotions were reasonable in the circumstances. But she had to survive. For John. For her girls.
Oh, God, hear my prayer. Help me. ~ Gary Haynes

Don't be too full of yourself because of how people hail you. When your head is swelling, it means there is more empty space to fill in there! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Dark City Blue is a freight train of a thriller crashing through some madhouse city night while a bomb's ticking down to zero. It's the cage fighting equivalent of a police procedural: violent, gaudy, and packing heat. ~ Trent Jamieson

Duke told me of planned...efforts against police response. As soon as possible after such conversations I would call the appropriate law enforcement agency in that city's jurisdictional area and alert them to Duke's information. Several times in follow-up conversations Duke would convey his surprise at how well prepared certain police agencies were to the Klan's presence, almost as if they knew beforehand what was going to happen ~ Ron Stallworth

Tea with a Chenjan. What was next? Ahmed thought. Dinner with bel dames? ~ Kameron Hurley

I simply try to act as an honest broker for greater persons and writers than I am ... I present no theory, nor do I have one ... I have constructed no Schema ... in terms of the struggle between Eros and agape and the futility of the former in the face of the latter. I have no aspirations, hoping only to show you what some great writers thought these things are. ~ Allan Bloom

He thought he would easily win against the tiny rabbit. ~ K.A. Perkins

Historically, professors have defended tenure as a way to protect their individualistic thought. But tenure can also be used as a club to wield against the powerless. ~ Ben Shapiro

Actually, when John died, for the first time I thought - for the first time I realized how old I was, because I'd always thought of myself - when John was alive I saw myself through his eyes and he saw me as how old I was when we got married - and so when he died I kind of looked at myself in a different way. And this has kept on since then. The yellow corvette. When I gave up the yellow corvette, I literally gave up on it, I turned it in on a Volvo station wagon. ~ Joan Didion

I really thought twice about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when that came in. I always was of a mind that it's an inherently stupid idea to put something like that in a glass case. ~ Elvis Costello

If you read more, worked harder, thought things through smartly, or wrote or argued better than other people, you won. ~ James Rebanks

Psychology, in fact, repre-
sents the juncture of two opposite directions of are still insufficient. In the science of human be- scientific thought that are dialectically comple-
mentary. It follows that the system of sciences
cannot be arranged in a linear order, as many
people beginning with Auguste Comte have at-
tempted to arrange them. ~ Jean Piaget

In the same way that we want to expand mental health service for people with mental illness, we also need to make sure that our police officers are getting the mental health help they need. ~ Brian Lindstrom

Oh, it's nothing to be ashamed of. Slaying a villain in the service of your king is the stuff of legends and what heroes are made of." [Fanen told Myron]
"It didn't feel very heroic. It made me sick. I don't even know why I ... no, that's a lie. I really have to stop doing that." [Myron said]
"Doing what?"
"Lying. ( ... ) It's evidence of self loathing. You see, when you are so ashamed of your actions, thoughts, or intentions, you lie to hide it rather than accept yourself for who you really are. The idea of how others see you becomes more important than the reality of you.
"It's like when a man would rather die than be thought of a coward. His life is not as important to him as his reputation. In the end, who is the braver? The man who dies rather than be thought of as a coward or the man who lives willing to face who he really is?" [Myron finished]
"I'm sorry, you lost me there" Fanen said with a quizzical look. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

I have always thought that what is needed is the development of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others. ~ Ella Baker

You are today where your decisions have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your decisions will take you. If you really want to know who you are now, take a tour about the decisions you made some years back. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself. His heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. He could not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently felt as it had been at the time; but now the recollection of her clinging defence of him, seemed to thrill him through and through, - to melt away every resolution, all power of self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never unheeded again. His heart throbbed loud and quick Strong man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home and resting-place. One moment, he glowed with impatience at the thought that she might do this, the next, he feared a passionate rejection, the very idea of which withered up his future with so deadly a blight that he refused to think of it. He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so gently, that he had never heard her; the street noises had been more distinct to his inattentive ear than her slow movements, in her soft muslin gown. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Do you think you could let someone go if you thought it was best for them? ~ Ally Condie

By helping others, we make ourselves better, and by helping others heal, we heal ourselves. I think we can do that on an individual level and a worldwide level. I hope people have a chance to give that a little bit of thought. ~ Charles Martin Smith

I've always thought flight was fun and wanted to write about flight, and I knew a lot of househusbands who were having a really bad time with it. I thought flight might perk up a marriage here or there. ~ Steven Amsterdam

This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself. ~ Mary Oliver

I sent my daughter 40 roses last November because I thought she was 40. And she laughed her head off. She is not going to be 40 until this year! ~ Eartha Kitt

Personally I thought you had to go into something like this with your eyes closed. If you thought about it too much you'd almost certainly not do it because there were just too many reasons not to. Rather the only thing to do was jump in and then take a peek at where you'd landed. ~ Cathy Rogers

River that must turn full after I stop dying
Song, my song, raise grief to music
Light as my loves' thought, the few sick
So sick of wrangling: thus weeping,
Sounds of light, stay in her keeping
And my son's face - this much for honor. ~ Louis Zukofsky

permission, I blurted it out - even though I should have thought twice. "Your daughter is looking for you." Cleo's best friend, who was part of the show ~ Jodi Picoult

It is an open question whether or not "liberal democracy" in its present form can provide a thought-world of sufficient moral substance to sustain meaningful lives. This is precisely the question that Vaclav Havel, then newly elected as president of Czechoslovakia, posed in an address to the U.S. Congress. "We still don't know how to put morality ahead of politics, science, and economics," he said. "We are still incapable of understanding that the only genuine backbone of our actions - if they are to be moral - is responsibility. Responsibility to something higher than my family, my country, my firm, my success." What Havel is saying is that it is not enough for his nation to liberate itself from one flawed theory; it is necessary to find another, and he worries that Technopoly provides no answer. To ~ Neil Postman

The uniform said they didn't want me anymore,' interrupted Lockie.
Tina could hear some anger underneath his faltering words.
'He said they weren't even looking for me.'
The words were said quietly and there was a question in them. Kids thought their parents were superheroes. Surely if they had been looking for him, they would have found him? Tina knew better. Parents were just kids with more responsibility. They couldn't control the world any more than an eight-year-old kid could. ~ Nicole Trope

So many people, Julie thought, stuck in their cars, stuck in their lives, just waiting for someone else to get out of their way. ~ Sara Shepard

She compared America to Rome. She said she thought the glory days of this country had long ago passed, and even those glory days were sullied: They had been built on the bodies of others. "And we can't get the message," she said. "We don't understand that we are embracing our deaths. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

We have traditionally thought of knowing in terms of subject and object and have struggled to attain objectivity by detaching our subjectivity. It can't be done, and one of the achievements of postmodernity is to demonstrate that. What we are called to, and what in the resurrection we are equipped for, is a knowing in which we are involved as subjects but as self-giving, not as self-seeking, subjects: in other words, a knowing that is a form of love. ~ N. T. Wright

Nothing in life now ever seems to end. Chemists tell you matter is never completely destroyed, and mathematicians tell you that if you halve each pace in crossing a room, you will never reach the opposite wall, so what an optimist I would be if I thought that this story ended here. ~ Graham Greene

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage. ~ James Russell Lowell

Don't let any emotional thought concerning success or failure, fame or gain, overtake you, and don't dwell upon them. Give up your personal shortcomings, such as foolish talk, distracting activities, and absentmindedness. Train in being totally gentle in all physical, verbal, or mental activities. Don't ponder the flaws of others; think instead of their good sides. ~ Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Beautiful. Jules once thought he'd understood what the word meant. He now believed it overused. Some word needed to be kept in reserve for the rare, the arresting, the surprising ... the magical. Or a new one invented. ~ Julie Anne Long

What's emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can't be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who're solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning 'square' rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn't that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it's capable of coming up with a solution. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage but He is building a palace. He intends to come & live in it Himself ~ C.S. Lewis