Quotes from Doris Lessing

The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

War...strengthened the position of the armament industries...to a point...that these industries dominated the economies and therefore the governments of all the participating nations...war barbarised and lowered the already very low level of accepted conduct.

Yes. Laugh. But there's sense in the old rules. They kept people out of trouble.' He was annoyed because I laughed, and said that a woman in my position needed extra dignity of behaviour. 'What position?' - I was suddenly very angry, because of the trapped feeling women get at such moments.

She had known it all the time: I'm so enormously exhausted, so utterly, basically tired, and in fibre of myself, that to know I haven't got to go through with living is like a reprieve. How extraordinary! And every one of these people, with the possible exception of this exuberant young man, is terrified that the machine is going to crash, and yet we all trooped obediently into it. So perhaps we all feel the same way?

So very Russian, people around were murmuring. That they did meant this was an audience pretty low down on the scale of sophistication, otherwise they would be saying, Just like us, isn't it?

el libro está vivo y es poderoso, fructificador y capaz de promover el pensamiento y la discusión solamente cuando su forma, intencionalidad y plan no se comprenden, debido a que el momento de captar la forma, la intencionalidad y el plan coincide con el momento en que no queda ya nada por extraer.

Nothing is more powerful than this nihilism, an angry readiness to throw everything overboard, a willingness, a longing to become part of dissolution. This emotion is one of the strongest reasons why wars continue. And

Oh, no, I'm not saying she isn't a nut -- she is -- but I've noticed before that sometimes someone like that behaves quite ordinarily with everybody, manages everything, you'd never think she was a nut, but there's just one person, with that person, she's out of control. It makes you wonder,' said Alice.

It was not a question of Philip's having lost hold. He had never grasped hold. Something had not happened that should have happened: a teacher, or someone, should have said: This one, Philip Fowler, he must be a craftsman, do something small, and delicate and intricate; we must get him trained for that. Look how perfectly he does things! He can't fold a shirt or arrange some chips and a piece of fish on a plate without making a picture of it. It had not happened.

Her ears, lightly fringed with white that looked silver, lifted and moved, back, forward, listening and sensing. Her face turned, slightly, after each new sensation, alert. Her tail moved, in another dimension, as if its tip was catching messages her other organs could not. She sat poised, air-light, looking, hearing, feeling, smelling, breathing, with all of her, fur, whiskers, ears -- everything, in delicate vibration.

She thought secretly that there is no more dangerous item in the world than a pretty young woman on the loose. Luckily, the older woman thought, when we are girls we don't know that we are like sticks of dynamite or like fireworks in a box too close to a fire.

We all of us seem to have this belief that things are going to get better. Why should they? Sometimes I think we're moving into a new ice age of tyranny and terror, why not? Who's to stop it—us?

As always he behaved as if he were an abstraction, not really there, a machine without a soul.

A writer is the conscience of the world.

For many thousands of years people had looked at expensive heads of hair and thought of how much food and warmth they represented, so obviously it was a thought of no use at all, so why bother to have it? But thoughts of this sort did go ticking on, useless or not.

What you don't understand is, people never believe these things. Not until they experience them. Then when they experience them they become people other people don't believe. Hard lines.

If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I'm cracking up? And if I were to crack up, what form would it take?

she had to fight for qualities that had not been even in her vocabulary. Patience. Self-discipline. Self-control. Self-abnegation. Chastity. Adaptability to others - this above all. This always.

Kittens, kittens, showers of kittens, visitations of kittens. So many, you see them as Kitten, like leaves growing on a bare branch, staying heavy and green, then falling, exactly the same every year. People coming to visit say: What happened to that lovely kitten? What lovely kitten? They are all lovely kittens.

But after all, to kind of like people, doc, puts you in a pretty privileged class for a start--so few citizens can afford to really kinda like people.

It is not too much to say that when the word blood is pronounced, this is a sign that reason is about to depart.

I'm not going to be like my mother. You're maniacs. You're mad. "Yes," said Kate. "I know it. And so you won't be. The best of luck to you. And what are you going to be instead?

For she was suffering that misery peculiar to the young, that they are going to be cheated by circumstances out of the full life every nerve and instinct is clamouring for.

A continuity isn't necessarily right, just because it's a continuity.' 'Yes, Ella, it is. It is. Believe me, it is