Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [737]

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognised and not recognised by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 737

Note

The thesis of the book’s political theory, set out as a single compressed sentence whose parenthetical already installs the self-cancelling logic it describes.