In the book, the party is trying to force people to see it as the only source of truth. It manipulates and changes the truth so that people don't have any way to know what's real. It's in this context that you need to think of this quote.
The quote comes at the end of Part 1, Chapter 7. Winston is thinking that the Party is too strong for him to oppose. But then he thinks that as long as he can hold onto a truth like 2+2=4 then he has a foundation of reality and can resist the Party's attempts to tell him lies.
The connection to the other equation is that later on when Winston is being tortured, he is reminded of this diary entry and is tortured to try to push him toward being able to see that 2+2=5 (which would mean that he would be giving up any hope of having an independent mind).
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