“ All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 818
“ That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.2K
“ That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 1.9K
“ A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 1.1K
“ It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.3K
“ I didn’t go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 1.3K
“ Trust no friend without faults, and love a maiden, but no angel. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 720
“ The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. Your body changes, but you don’t change at all. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.8K
“ Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 3.1K
“ What's terrible is to pretend that secondrate is firstrate. To pretend that you don't need love when you do; or you like your work when you know quite well you're capable of better. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.6K
“ Novels give you the matrix of emotions, give you the flavour of a time in a way formal history cannot. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
“ At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
“ I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
“ I write all these remarks with exactly the same feeling as if I were writing a letter to post into the distant past: I am so sure that everything we now take for granted is going to be utterly swept away in the next decade. (So why write novels? Indeed, why! I suppose we have to go on living as if ...) ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
“ This is an inevitable and easily recognizable stage in every revolutionary movement: reformers must expect to be disowned by those who are only too happy to enjoy what has been won for them. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 3.8K
“ Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a selfperpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 747
“ As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take it for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and the sciences, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don't wish to subject themselves to further moulding, tend to leave, in a halfunconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won't be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to the people who leave—that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn't like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, here idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed—yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institutions rigid and oppressive. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.5K
“ It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the successstakes. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 1.1K
“ Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a selfperpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 455
“ But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.1K
“ As in the political sphere, the child is taught that he is free, a democrat, with a free will and a free mind, lives in a free country, makes his own decisions. At the same time he is a prisoner of the assumptions and dogmas of his time, which he does not question, because he has never been told they exist. By the time a young person has reached the age when he has to choose (we still take it for granted that a choice is inevitable) between the arts and the sciences, he often chooses the arts because he feels that here is humanity, freedom, choice. He does not know that he is already moulded by a system: he does not know that the choice itself is the result of a false dichotomy rooted in the heart of our culture. Those who do sense this, and who don't wish to subject themselves to further moulding, tend to leave, in a halfunconscious, instinctive attempt to find work where they won't be divided against themselves. With all our institutions, from the police force to academia, from medicine to politics, we give little attention to the people who leave—that process of elimination that goes on all the time and which excludes, very early, those likely to be original and reforming, leaving those attracted to a thing because that is what they are already like. A young policeman leaves the Force saying he doesn't like what he has to do. A young teacher leaves teaching, here idealism snubbed. This social mechanism goes almost unnoticed—yet it is as powerful as any in keeping our institutions rigid and oppressive. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.1K
“ It is my belief...that the talents every child has, regardless of his official 'I.Q,' could stay with him through life, to enrich him and everybody else, if these talents were not regarded as commodities with a value in the successstakes. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 334
“ But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 187
“ Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 2.9K
“ Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 1.2K
“ Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares. ”
- Doris Lessing- Copy
- 3.8K
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