There are thought criminals who maintain that the resistance is not real. Believe me, Winston, it is very real. Perhaps you are not familiar with how it operates.

I am attentive to the news. O'Brien Indeed. Then perhaps you imagine a huge network of conspirators prepared to commit any atrocity to weaken and demoralize the order of our society. The reality is infinitely more subtle. If Goldstein himself fell into the hands of the Thought Police, he could not give them a list of his agents. Such a list does not exist. They are not an organization in the sense we know. Nothing holds it together but an idea. Individually, they cheat, forge, blackmail, corrupt children, spread disease and prostitution, in the name of spreading knowledge from generation to generation, until... in a thousand years...