What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The automatic reaction of practically any young person is, at once, against authority. That, I think, began in the First World War… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You are taken, shaken, by moments when the improbability of our lives comes over you like a fever. Everything is remarkable, people,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
When I became political and Communist, it was because they were the only people I had ever met who fought the color… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Loneliness, she thought, was craving for other people's company. But she did not know that loneliness can be an unnoticed cramping of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Mother's room, and mother's need for privacy become a valuable lesson in respect for other people's rights. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Anna was saying to herself: why do I always have this awful need to make other people see things as I do?… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I think people are always looking for gurus. It's the easiest thing in the world to become a guru. It's quite terrifying.… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I spend a good deal of time wondering how we will seem to the people who come after us. This is not… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
In fact I've reached the stage where I look at people and say - he or she, they are whole at all… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Often the mass emotions are those which seem the noblest, best and most beautiful. And yet, inside a year, five years, a… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there,… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I stood looking down out of the window. The street seemed miles down. Suddenly I felt as if I'd flung myself out… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
The 1960s was probably the first time in history that young people were recognized as a big group of consumers and as… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I am so happy to be communicating with people on this newest of new wavelengths which to some older people must seem… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
Some books are not read in the right way because they have skipped a stage of opinion, assume a crystallization of information in society… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“In the morning, when she wishes me to wake, she crouches on my chest, and pats my face with her paw. Or, if I… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“She was using the water as she had used the fruit earlier—to calm herself, to assure herself of the possibility of normality. Yet all… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I remember World War II when there were very few books, very little paper available. For me to walk into a shop or look… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
They can't give a Nobel to someone who's dead so I think they were probably thinking they had better give it to me now… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“While she strode rapidly through the ward to the door at the other end, she was able to see that every bed or cot… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married. — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have… — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
“The charge that the United Nations are using bacteriological warfare in Korea cannot be dismissed merely because it would be insane.” — Doris Lessing Copy Share Image
