Orwell, George — Nineteen eighty-four [960]

His voice had grown almost dreamy. The exaltation, the lunatic enthusiasm, was still in his face. He is not pretending, thought Winston; he is not a hypocrite; he believes every word he says. What most oppressed him was the consciousness of his own intellectual inferiority. He watched the heavy yet graceful form strolling to and fro, in and out of the range of his vision. O’Brien was a being in all ways larger than himself. There was no idea that he had ever had, or could have, that O’Brien had not long ago known, examined and rejected. His mind contained Winston’s mind. But in that case how could it be true that O’Brien was mad? It must be he, Winston, who was mad. — Orwell, George, Nineteen eighty-four, 960

Note

The intellectual submission completes what physical torture began: Winston concludes that because O’Brien’s mind contains his own, and O’Brien is not mad, it is Winston who must be mad — a logical surrender of sanity itself to the one who watches and knows.