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Doris Lessing

Explore inspiring quotes by Doris Lessing, a remarkable figure whose words continue to inspire and motivate people around the world.

36

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24

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women

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women

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learning

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war

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society

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truth

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alone

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Featured Quotes by Doris Lessing

Some of the most memorable quotes from this author

"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 Lessingage

"For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying."

— Doris Lessingalone

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

— Doris Lessingbest

"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 Lessingchange

"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."

— Doris Lessingdreams

"Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way."

— Doris Lessingfunny

All Quotes by Doris Lessing

Browse all quotes from this author

"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

"For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying."

-Doris Lessing

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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

"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

changeView Quote

"We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed."

-Doris Lessing

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"Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way."

-Doris Lessing

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"I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government."

-Doris Lessing

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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

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"September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible."

-Doris Lessing

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"What really fascinates me is this need that is so strong now that if you read a work of the imagination you instantly have to say, 'Oh, what this really is is so-and-so,' reducing it to a simple formula."

-Doris Lessing

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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

learningView Quote

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

-Doris Lessing

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"There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they don't."

-Doris Lessing

learningView Quote

"What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared."

-Doris Lessing

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"I do not think that marriage is one of my talents. I've been much happier unmarried than married."

-Doris Lessing

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"It's lovely to have money to give away - that's the bonus of winning the Nobel."

-Doris Lessing

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"When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue."

-Doris Lessing

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"What the feminists want of me is something they haven't examined because it comes from religion. They want me to bear witness."

-Doris Lessing

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"What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared."

-Doris Lessing

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"Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time."

-Doris Lessing

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"Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse."

-Doris Lessing

societyView Quote

"There's an unconscious bias in our society: girls are wonderful boys are terrible. And to be a boy, or young man, growing up, having to listen to all this, it must be painful."

-Doris Lessing

societyView Quote

"What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared."

-Doris Lessing

societyView Quote

"I wanted to highlight that whole dreadful process in book publishing that 'nothing succeeds like success.'"

-Doris Lessing

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"I think kids ought to travel. I think it's very good to carry kids around. It's good for them. Of course it's tough on the parents."

-Doris Lessing

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

-Doris Lessing

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"I don't know much about creative writing programs. But they're not telling the truth if they don't teach, one, that writing is hard work, and, two, that you have to give up a great deal of life, your personal life, to be a writer."

-Doris Lessing

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"It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction."

-Doris Lessing

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"My father was in the First World War."

-Doris Lessing

"When there's a war, people get married."

-Doris Lessing

"I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I."

-Doris Lessing

"I think a lot of romanticizing has gone on with the women's movement."

-Doris Lessing

womenView Quote

"Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative - despite what current ideology says."

-Doris Lessing

womenView Quote

"I don't think that the feminist movement has done much for the characters of women."

-Doris Lessing

womenView Quote

"All my friends' mothers were appalling women."

-Doris Lessing

womenView Quote

"You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years, whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much."

-Doris Lessing

womenView Quote

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