English author of novels and short stories who grew up in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) (born in 1919)

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Famous quotes by Doris Lessing:Sort:Popular A - Z

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.
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.
In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.
Laughter is by definition healthy.
That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.
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.
Think wrongly if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.
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.
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.

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