Quotes from Doris Lessing

I think people need other people to be kind to them.

Literature and history, these two great branches of human learning, records of human behvaiour, human thought, are less and less valued by the young, and by educators, too. Yet from them one may learn how to be a citizen and a human being. We may learn how to look at ourselves and at the society we live in, in that calm, cool, critical and sceptical way which is the only possible stance for a civilized human being, or so have said all the philosophers and the sages.

That's not left wing. That's a la mode.

It's a hard case,' said Paul. 'First, I'm twenty. That means I'm very nervous and ill-at-ease with women. Second, I'm twenty. I have all my life before me, and frankly the prospect often appals me. Thirdly, I'm twenty, and I'm in love with Anna and my heart is breaking.

Now, I am not Anna, I have no will, I can't move out of a situation once it has started, I just go along with it.

B?t c? Ä'i?u gì cÅ©ng ??u t?t ??p hÆ¡n má»™t ná»—i s? hãi chúng ta t?ng bi?t ??n

Der Morgen... oh, wie schwer ist jeder Morgen, wenn der ganze Tag vor einem liegt... jede Aufgabe türmt sich wie ein Berg...

Para avaliarmos os verdadeiros sentimentos de uma pessoa acerca de uma coisa temos de nos guiar por um sorriso que lhe ilumina o rosto sem ela se aperceber.

Such people, such individuals, will be a most productive yeast and ferment, and lucky the society who has plenty of them.

By using our freedoms, I do not means just joining demonstrations, political parties, and so on and so forth, which is only part of the democratic process, but examining ideas, from whatever source they come, to see how they may usefully contribute to our lives and o the societies we live in.

Don't read a book out of its right time for you.

Myth doesn't mean something untrue, but a concentration of truth.

She was well armed with facts from The New Statesman, She was even better armed by the conviction of being in the right, but what is the use of being right if one is faced by the blank, unaltered stare of satisfied ignorance? Martha was so new to the game that she was surprised by Mrs. Buss's calm remark, Oh, well, everyone's entitled to their ideas. She said it was not a question of ideas, but one of fact.

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

Well, don't you think it's at least possible, just possible that things can happen to us so bad that we don't ever get over them?

The hands were saying: Why do you hurt me like this?—but if you insist then I'll endure it.

If you choose to make an nonentity of yourself, do, but don't stick that label on me.

We're back at the blade of grass again, that will press up through the bits of rusted steel a thousand years after the bombs have exploded and the world's crust has melted. Because the force of will in the blade of grass is the same as the small painful endurance.

What is a hero without love for mankind?

At the end of a century of grand revolutionary romanticism; frightful sacrifices for the sake of paradises and heavens on earth and the withering away of the state; passionate dreams of Utopias and wonderlands and perfect cities; attempts at communes and commonwealths, at co-operatives and kibbutzes and kolkhozes – after all this, would any of us have believed that most people in the world would settle gratefully for a little honesty, a little competence in government?

To hold in one's mind that a central transforming force is always at work in the world - the force of evolution itself - enables one to see that a person may be learning while not knowing he is doing so.

What government, anywhere in the world, will happily envisage its subjects learning to free themselves from governmental and state rhetoric and pressures? Passionate loyalty and subjection to group pressure is what every state relies on. Some, of course, more than others.

My lot were shocked and disturbed, for we thought, if you are not 'politically conscious', then you get what you deserve – Hitler, at least. That some of the most politically conscious generations in history had got Stalin was not a thought we could yet accommodate.

But the majority will continue to insist—speaking metaphorically—that black is white, and after a period of exasperation, irritation, even anger, certainly incomprehension, the minority will fall into line. Not always, but nearly always. There are indeed glorious individualists who stubbornly insist on telling the truth as they see it, but most give in to the majority opinion, obey the atmosphere.