Thought Police Quotes

1. "Lydia screamed. The car began to swerve all over the street. "YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH! I'LL KILL YOU!" She crossed the double yellow line at high speed, directly into oncoming traffic. Horns sounded and cars scattered. We drove on against the flow of traffic, cars approaching us peeling off to the left and right. Then just as abruptly Lydia swerved back across the double line into the lane we had just vacated. Where are the police? I thought. Why is it that when Lydia does something the police become nonexistent?"
Author: Charles Bukowski

2. "The Thought Police: To censor and protect."
Author: Craig Bruce

3. "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."
Author: David Mamet

4. "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."
Author: George Orwell

5. "Harton thought that if one squeezed humanity through a wine press, its essence would flow out as drops of policemen."
Author: Georges Limbour

6. "Fresh from a costume fitting, where I had been posing in front of the mirror assuming what I thought was a strong position - arms folded, butch-looking...you know - I met with the woman in charge of Holloway police station. She gave me the most invaluable advice: never let them see you cry, and never cross your arms. When I asked why, she said 'because it is a defensive action and therefore weak."
Author: Helen Mirren

7. "This next record is dedicated to some personal friends of mine, the LAPD. For every cop that has ever taken advantage of somebody, beat 'em down or hurt 'em, because they got long hair, listen to the wrong kinda music, wrong color, whatever they thought was the reason to do it. For every one of those fuckin' police, I'd like to take a pig out here in this parkin' lot and shoot 'em in their mothafuckin' face."
Author: Ice T

8. "ARE YOU ASKING ME WHAT THOUGHTS YOU SHOULD THINK?? What kind of Orwellian police state do you think I'm running here? Think whatever thoughts come into your thinking device, sir. (response to a reader asking what to keep in mind while reading Warm Bodies)"
Author: Isaac Marion

9. "...stereotypes were self-reinforcing because unconsciously you were looking for things to confirm them. That was why policemen thought – based on so-called experience – that all criminals were stupid, and criminals thought the same about all policemen."
Author: Jo Nesbø

10. "Blaisedell, the poet, had said to him, 'You love beer so much. I'll bet some day you'll go in and order a beer milk shake.' It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since. He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn't let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer. Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar? It was like a shrimp ice cream. Once the thing got into your head you couldn't forget it...If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he'd better do it in a town where he wasn't known. But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn't known--they might call the police."
Author: John Steinbeck

11. "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 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."328–GEORGE ORWELL, 1984"
Author: John W. Whitehead

12. "An overweight officer, having delivered a batch of children to the home, started telling one of the guards about his heart problem. "You think you want to be a cop, but you don't, because it kills you," said the officer, mopping his brow. Then he told of another officer with a lung problem, and one who had cancer, and of others who were stress-sick, and of how none of them earned enough to afford decent doctors. Abdul hadn't previously thought of policemen as people with hearts and lungs who worried about money or their health. The world seemed replete with people as bad off as himself, and this made him feel less alone."
Author: Katherine Boo

13. "You probably thought that curse was the cleverest thing ever, didn't you?"His lips turned down as he tried not to smile. "It was one of my better moments." I saw lights ahead of us past the trees, and for a moment I thought I was seeing souls in a whole new freaky way until I realized they were, in fact, red and blue and flashing. Police lights. Lots and lots of police lights."What the crap?" I hurried toward the flashing police lights, but Reth put a hand on my arm to slow me."Perhaps, for once, it would be best to evaluate the situation before charging in. This particular type of human carries weapons slightly more lethal than your beloved pink monstrosity.""Why would the police be here though? Something must be wrong."Reth looked exasperated. "When is something ever not wrong in your life?"I frowned. "That's my line."
Author: Kiersten White

14. "It was not the thought that I was so unloved that froze me. I had taught myself to do without love.It was not the thought that God was cruel that froze me. I had taught myself never to expect anything from Him.What froze me was the fact that I had absolutely no reason to move in any direction. What had made me move through so many dead and pointless years was curiosity.Now even that had flickered out.How long I stood frozen there, I cannot say. If I was ever going to move again, someone else was going to have to furnish the reason for moving.Somebody did.A policeman watched me for a while, and then he came over to me, and he said, "You alright?"Yes," I said.You've been standing here a long time," he said.I know," I said.You waiting for somebody?" he said.No," I said.Better move on, don't you think?" he said.Yes, sir," I said.And I moved on."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

15. "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."
Author: Kurt Vonnegut

16. "Modernism was based on a kind of arrogance ... and led designers to believe that if they thought of something cool, it must be considered universally cool. That is, if something's worth doing, it's worth driving into the ground to the exclusion of all other approaches. Look at the use of parentheses in Lisp or the use of white space as syntax in Python. Or the mandatory use of objects in many languages, including Java. All of these are ways of taking freedom away from the end user "for their own good". They're just versions of Orwell's Newspeak, in which it's impossible to think bad thoughts. We escaped from the fashion police in the 1970s, but many programmers are still slaves of the cyber police."
Author: Larry Wall

17. "Soldiers serving in the Military Police and those serving in the Air Corps (the forerunner of the Air Force) about how good a job they thought their service did in recognizing and promoting people of ability. The answer was clear. Military Policemen had a far more positive view of their organization than did enlisted men in the Air Corps. On the face of it, that made no sense. The Military Police had one of the worst rates of promotion in all of the armed forces. The Air Corps had one of the best. The chance of an enlisted man rising to officer status in the Air Corps was twice that of a soldier in the Military Police. So, why on earth would the Military Policemen be more satisfied? The answer, Stouffer famously explained, is that Military Policemen compared themselves only to other Military Policemen. And if you got a promotion in the Military Police, that was such a rare event that you were very happy. And if you didn't get promoted, you were in the same boat as most of your peers—so"
Author: Malcolm Gladwell

18. "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.)"
Author: Martin Amis

19. "Protestantism has actually put a man in the position of a country governed by secret police. The spy and eavesdropper, 'conscience,' watches over every motion of the mind, and all thought and action is for it a 'matter of conscience,' i.e. police business."
Author: Max Stirner

20. "Aghast, Yasmeen gaped at her before looking to the duke. "It's worse than I thought. Not just the Horde, not just the police- you're keeping company with someone who has principles."
Author: Meljean Brook

21. "First of all I thought it was ugly, I thought it was ridiculous that undercover police guys would drive a striped tomato and I've never been a big champion of Ford."
Author: Paul Michael Glaser

22. "Secondly, I thought it was ridiculous to have two undercover policemen driving around in a striped tomato."
Author: Paul Michael Glaser

23. "So you send other people into the camps, he thought, to get your husband out. It sounds like a typical police deal. It's probably the truth"
Author: Philip K. Dick

24. "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?"
Author: Randolph D. Calverhall

25. "When someone dies they can be any age you remember can't they ' she asked. As I tried to think of a reply she continued 'You probably think about the grown-up Tess because you were still close to her. But when I woke up I thought of her when she was three wearing a fairy skirt I'd got her in the Woolworth's and a policeman's helmet. Her wand was a wooden spoon. On the bus yesterday I imagined holding her when she was two days old. I felt the warmth of her. I remembered all her fingers clasped around my finger so tiny they didn't even meet. I remembered the shape of her head and stroking the nape of her neck till she slept. I remembered her smell. She smelled of innocence. Other times she's thirteen and so pretty that I worry for her everytime I see a man look at her. All of those Tesses is my daughter."
Author: Rosamund Lupton

26. "Up until then I'd thought that white people and colored people getting along was the big aim, but after that I decided everybody being colorless together was a better plan. I thought of that policeman, Eddie Hazelwurst, saying I'd lowered myself to be in this house of colored women, and for the very life of me I couldn't understand how it had turned out this way, how colored women had become the lowest ones on the totem pole. You only had to look at them to see how special they were, like hidden royalty among us. Eddie Hazelwurst. What a shitbucket."
Author: Sue Monk Kidd

27. "Vimes struggled to his feet, shook his head and set off after it. No thought was involved. It is the ancient instinct of terriers and policemen to chase anything that runs away."
Author: Terry Pratchett

28. "How much she wanted it - that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in."
Author: Virginia Woolf

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