Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [1073]

Suddenly, like a lump of submerged wreckage breaking the surface of water, the thought burst into his mind: ‘It doesn’t really happen. We imagine it. It is hallucination.’ He pushed the thought under instantly. The fallacy was obvious. It presupposed that somewhere or other, outside oneself, there was a ‘real’ world where ‘real’ things happened. But how could there be such a world? What knowledge have we of anything, save through our own minds? All happenings are in the mind. Whatever happens in all minds, truly happens. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 1073

Note

Orwell gives the epistemology of doublethink its cleanest statement: all happenings are in the mind, therefore a shared fiction is reality. The ‘submerged wreckage’ image — a truth that floats up unbidden and must be pushed under — dramatizes the sheer effort of un-knowing.