To know and not to know,
to be conscious of complete truthfulness
while telling carefully constructed lies,
to hold simultaneously two opinions
which cancelled out,
knowing them to be contradictory
and believing in both of them,
to use logic against logic,
to repudiate morality
while laying claim to it,
to believe that democracy was impossible
and that the Party was the guardian of democracy,
to forget whatever it was necessary to forget,
then to draw it back into memory again
at the moment when it was needed,
and then promptly to forget it again,
and above all,
to apply the same process
to the process itself—
that was the ultimate subtlety:
consciously to induce unconsciousness,
and then, once again,
to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis
you had just performed.
