Thought-terminating cliché

A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance.

The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis” (Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, page 429). [1]

The thought-terminating cliché is related to the opaque pigeonhole, or closed category, which also does not permit analysis.

In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fictional constructed language Newspeak is designed to reduce language entirely to a set of thought-terminating clichés. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World society uses thought-terminating clichés in a more conventional manner, most notably in regard to the drug soma as well as modified versions of real-life platitudes, such as, "A doctor a day keeps the jim-jams away".

Non-political examples

• Do as I say, not as I do.
• Why? Because I said so.
• That's a no-brainer.
• When you get to my age… (as in “When you get to my age you'll find that's not true.”).
• You don't always get what you want.
• The best defense is a good offense.
• Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
• It works in theory, but not in practice.
• There's no silver bullet.
• Stupid is as stupid does.
• Life is unfair.

See also

• Indoctrination
• Loaded language
• Slogan
• Soundbite
• Newspeak