1984

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party intellectual knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the excersise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The proces has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence guilt. Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvienient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies  – all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to excersise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowlegde; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth.”

“In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane”

“He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.”

“In this game that we’re playing we can’t win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, that’s all”

“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”