In university they dont tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools. – Doris Lessing
There was a time when young people respected learning and literature and now they dont. – Doris Lessing
What society doesnt realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they dont now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared. – Doris Lessing
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
September 11 was terrible but, if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasnt that terrible. – Doris Lessing
I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. Its a cruel and evil government. – Doris Lessing
The great secret that all old people share is that you really havent changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you dont change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion. – Doris Lessing
Men are restless, adventurous. Women are conservative – despite what current ideology says. – Doris Lessing
My father was in the First World War. – 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
Trust no friend without faults, and love a woman, but no angel. – Doris Lessing
Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse. – Doris Lessing
Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time. – Doris Lessing
Sometimes I think what I write is funny in its quiet way. – Doris Lessing
We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed. – Doris Lessing
There is only one real sin and that is to persuade oneself that the second best is anything but second best. – Doris Lessing
For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying. – Doris Lessing
