Golden Notebook Quotes

• 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."

  Doris Lessing

  Children, Sorry, School

  Doris Lessing (2012). “The Golden Notebook”, p.16, HarperCollins UK

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• Free women," said Anna, wryly. She added, with an anger new to Molly, so that she earned another quick scrutinizing glance from her friend: "They still define us in terms of relationships with men, even the best of them.

  Doris Lessing

  Men, Anna, Said

  Doris Lessing (2012). “The Golden Notebook”, p.26, HarperCollins UK

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• What's terrible is to pretend that 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.

  Doris Lessing

  Love, Inspirational, Needs

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

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• 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

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

  Doris Lessing

  Education, Educational, Indoctrination

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• The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it.

  Doris Lessing

  Country, Mean, Knowing

  "The Golden Notebook (Free Women: 1)". Book by Doris Lessing, 1962.

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• We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

  Doris Lessing

  Truth, Stupid, Fighting

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

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• Art is the Mirror of our betrayed ideals.

  Doris Lessing

  Art, Mirrors, Betrayed

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

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• Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel.

  Doris Lessing

  Love, Trust, Angel

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• How boring these emotions are that we're caught in and can't get free of, no matter how much we want to.

  Doris Lessing

  Want, Matter, Emotion

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

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• The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country... I was really astounded that some people were shocked.

  Doris Lessing

  Notebook, Country, People

  "Doris Lessing: being a woman writer". Undated profile at the BBC World Service, www.bbc.co.uk.

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• 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.

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• In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

  Doris Lessing

  Memorable, Learning, College

  Doris May Lessing (1970). “Martha Quest: A Complete Novel”

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• In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all because they've chosen to block off at this stage or that. People stay sane by blocking off, by limiting themselves.

  Doris Lessing

  Block, People, Looks

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

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• 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.

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• With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how.

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Reading, Thought Provoking

  Doris May Lessing (1992). “African laughter: four visits to Zimbabwe”

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• I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.

  Doris Lessing

  Numbers, Focus, Alternatives

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

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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 moving easily under the flesh.

  Doris Lessing

  Happiness, Moving, Knowing

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

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• People are just cannibals unless they leave each other alone.

  Doris Lessing

  People, Cannibal

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

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• Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.

  Maggie Kuhn

  Confusion, Age, Body

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• There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best.

  Doris Lessing

  Inspirational, Real, Sin

  The Golden Notebook "Free Women: 5" (1962)

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• 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”

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• Literature is analysis after the event.

  Doris Lessing

  Events, Analysis, Literature

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

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• 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

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• One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel -- the quality of philosophy.

  Doris Lessing

  Philosophy, Should Have, Quality

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

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