Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Thought marked by the acceptance of gross contradictions and falsehoods, especially when used as a technique of self-indoctrination.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun The
power ofholding twocontradictory beliefs in one'smind simultaneously , andaccepting both of them.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun believing two contradictory ideas at the same time
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Expect lots more of this newspeak and doublethink from the Moulton-Kenney Ministry of Love.
Shaun Kenney Bombs? 2007
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Conservatives (read: Republicans) want to be allowed to engage in doublethink on stem cell research, like they do on the more basic tenets of “decency” and “morality.”
Think Progress » Defending Bush’s Veto, Rove Grossly Distorts Stem Cell Science 2006
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Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.
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Outside the Inner Party, doublethink is not even consistent.
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Outside the Inner party doublethink is merely an extreme form of the phenomenon known to psychologists as cognitive dissonance.
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Through exercises in doublethink and self-delusion described in detail by Revel, democracies are fatally prone to questioning their own motives and giving their opponents the benefit of the doubt.
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But as I hope to show in my discussion of pro-choice reasoning, doublethink is not all that persuasive.
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One essential consequence of doublethink is that the Party can rewrite history with impunity, for "The Party is never wrong."
Background information for George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 1949
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Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink.
futuristguy 2008
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In practice it was not difficult for any person well grounded in doublethink (Orwell’s emphasis) to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished’ vii
Hope Begins in the Dark: Re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four 2005
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