Famous Doris Lessing Quotations

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"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."
by Doris Lessing
"All sanity depends on this that is should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh."
by Doris Lessing
"In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools."
by Doris Lessing
"Laughter is by definition healthy."
by Doris Lessing
"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."
by Doris Lessing
"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."
by Doris Lessing
"Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself."
by Doris Lessing
"What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is first-rate. 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."
by Doris Lessing
"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 accomodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating 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 judgement. 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 society."
by Doris Lessing
"Better Counsel comes overnight."
by Doris Lessing
"Literature is analysis after the event."
by Doris Lessing
"Some people obtain fame, others deserve it."
by Doris Lessing
"What is a hero without love for mankind."
by Doris Lessing
"Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don't seem to see this."
by Doris Lessing
"A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer."
by Doris Lessing
"Oh Doris Lessing, my dear -- your Anna is wrong about orgasms. They are no proof of love -- any more than that other Anna's fall under the wheels of that Russian train was a proof of love. It's all female shenanigans, cultural mishegoss, conditioning, brainwashing, male mythologizing. What does a woman want? She wants what she has been told she ought to want. Anna Wulf wants orgasm, Anna Karenina, death. Orgasm is no proof of anything. Orgasm is proof of orgasm. Someday every woman will have orgasms -- like every family has color TV -- and we can all get on with the real business of life."
by Erica Jong
"It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important."
by Doris Lessing
"But it isn't only the terror everywhere, and the fear of being conscious of it, that freezes people. It's more than that. People know they are..."
by Doris Lessing
"There was a kind of shifting of the balances of my brain, of the way I had been thinking, the same kind of realignment as when, a few days bef..."
by Doris Lessing
"There was a continuous movement now, from Zone Five to Zone Four. And from Zone Four to Zone Three, and from us, up the pass. There was a ligh..."
by Doris Lessing
"This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song..."
by Doris Lessing
"We looked down at a glassy glittering icy place many days walking across and very deep, between enormous icy black peaks. All we looked at had..."
by Doris Lessing
"What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapprov..."
by Doris Lessing
"You can't be a Red if you're married to a civil servant."
by Doris Lessing
"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 so..."
by Doris Lessing


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