Sublime

That explanation makes me think of Orwellian “doublethink.” From 1984: To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies . . . The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them . . . To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in the

Orwell laid out his thoughts on how politically corrupting shoddy language could be in his famous 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language”: Modern English . . . is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, a

Le siècle des idéologies confirma aussi l’importance stratégique du combat des idées et de la place des intellectuels, pour le meilleur avec ceux qui restèrent fidèles à la liberté, comme pour le pire avec la dérive des nombreux compagnons de route du communisme35.

Major offences in SOE – such as leakages to C, which were considered almost as treasonable as leakages to the enemy – were dealt with by the Executive Council. Minor offences, such as being right, were disciplined by the directorate in which they occurred.

As George Orwell said of cliches:2 What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around . . . When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the e