George Orwell Quotes

Big Brother is watching... look busy.

The whole Big Brother vision of the world is looming large.

On each landing, opposite the lift shaft, the poster with the enormous face gazed from the wall. It was one of those pictures which are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran.

'1984,' one of the most important works ever written, helped us understand the Cold War. In '1984,' the dictatorship was always surveilling you. Now, young people want to be surveyed. They want people to know where they are at all times.

Today in Germany, everyone is being watched--even the watchers.

It's really weird watching the government watch me.

The Orwellian vision was about state-sponsored surveillance. Now it's not just the state, it's your nosy neighbor, your ex-spouse and people who want to spam you.

Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

There are so many classic Big Brother warning books: the Internet is a horrible, controlling thing, as if it has a consciousness or political agenda.

... too Orwellian to contemplate, they've gone way too far.

If you want a Big Brother, you get all that comes with it

In the Soviet Union, you always have the feeling someone is watching you.

The fact that Facebook presents facial recognition programmes as a desirable development, well, that in itself is a decisive step toward fascism, as far as I'm concerned.

People everywhere face the threat of control by government and technology.

The term Big Brother is from George Orwell's book 1984 - where everyone's watched over by a network of cameras called Big Brother. I've never understood why Orwell chose that phrase for somebody watching you all the time. Isn't that more like Creepy Uncle?

Yes, you are under surveillance. Yes, it is odious. Yes, it should bother you. And yes, it's hard to know how to avoid it.

Surveillance breeds conformity.

I have no private life, as I am constantly under police surveillance.

Setting people to spy on one another is not the way to protect freedom.

Big Brother doesn't like all these Little Brothers looking at it.

In Iraq during the days of Saddam, I had a government minder who followed me everywhere, reported on my activities.

I don't see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything.

We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.

It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state.

It's creepy, knowing someone might be watching me. Why do they need that?