Doris Lessing Quotes

Quotes about:

• People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, People, Mind

  18 Copy quote

• Nicknames are potent ways of cutting people down to size.

  Doris Lessing

  Cutting, Names, People

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “Under my skin”

  7 Copy quote

• Whatever you're meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.

  Doris Lessing

  Design, Impossible, Recognition

  "The Golden Notebook". Book by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. 1962.

  62 Copy quote

• A simple grateful thought turned heavenwards is the most perfect prayer.

  Doris Lessing

  Thank You, Prayer, Grateful

  70 Copy quote

• That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

  Doris Lessing

  Education, Learning, Understanding

  DORIS LESSING (1969). “THE FOUR-GATED CITY”

  38 Copy quote

• Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

  Doris Lessing

  Real, Democracies Have, People

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  45 Copy quote

• As you get older, you don't get wiser. You get irritable.

  Doris Lessing

  Wiser You, Wiser

  "Doris Lessing: key quotes". www.theguardian.com. November 18, 2013.

  26 Copy quote

• Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Creativity, Thinking

  "Grande dame of letters who’s not going quietly". Interview with Amanda Craig, www.thetimes.co.uk. November 23, 2003.

  24 Copy quote

• Coincidences are God's way of remaining anonymous.

  Doris Lessing

  Spiritual, Way, Coincidence

  15 Copy quote

• This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.

  Doris Lessing

  Strong, Thinking, Civilization

  Doris Lessing (2013). “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside”, p.3, Harper Collins

  38 Copy quote

• It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

  Doris Lessing

  Dream, Hurt, Phoenix

  "A hunger for books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

  12 Copy quote

• Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Success, Opportunity

  "Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing". Book by Larry Chang, 2006.

  47 Copy quote

• The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

  Doris Lessing

  Birthday, Time, Years

  The Sunday Times (London), May 10, 1992.

  21 Copy quote

• we have not yet developed a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination.

  Doris Lessing

  Education, Educational, Indoctrination

  18 Copy quote

• A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants.

  Doris Lessing

  Tyrants, Library, World

  20 Copy quote

• Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

  Doris Lessing

  Mean, Thinking, People

  Doris May Lessing (1981). “The Golden Notebook”, Bantam

  42 Copy quote

• I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.

  Doris Lessing

  People, Perspective, Looks

  "A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

  9 Copy quote

• I treasure solitude. One doesn't have to have human contact.

  Doris Lessing

  Solitude, Treasure, Contact

  10 Copy quote

• The freedom of women was achieved by two things: One, the Pill. Two... by labour-saving devices like the washing machine. By science, not feminism.

  Doris Lessing

  Two, Feminism, Pills

  16 Copy quote

• If what we think now is different from what we thought then, we can take it for granted that what we think in a year will be different again.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, Years, Different

  Doris May Lessing (1992). “Canopus in Argos: Archives”

  5 Copy quote

• What matters most is that we learn from living.

  Doris Lessing

  Life, Witty, What Matters

  "Permission to Play: Taking Time to Renew Your Smile". Book by Jill Murphy Long, 2003.

  13 Copy quote

• Time is the River on which the leaves of our thoughts are carried into oblivion.

  Doris Lessing

  Rivers, Literature, Oblivion

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

  8 Copy quote

• Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences.

  Doris Lessing

  Song, Humanity, Legacy

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Doris Lessing

  Party, Views, Self

  "The Sunday Times", May 10, 1992.

  15 Copy quote

• You have to be grown up, really grown up, not merely in years, to understand your parents.

  Doris Lessing

  Years, Parent

  Doris May Lessing (1997). “Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962”

  38 Copy quote

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