...or like an old friend one has known too well and doesn't want to see. Doris Lessing More Quotes by Doris Lessing More Quotes From Doris Lessing When the print revolution occurred 400 years ago, human beings lost a certain mental capacity, including a sense of memory. In Africa today, you meet people who still carry everything in their heads, the way we used to. We rely on telephone books, address books. We have to look up everything. Doris Lessing memoriesbookpeople I often feel like a dinosaur. I don't get the technology thing at all. I was on the Internet not long ago for Barnes and Noble, and people were ringing up from all over the world - Australia, Canada, France. I experienced it as an informal chat, which was pleasant, but I couldn't quite take it in. It had a strong element of unreality. I can't be bothered to switch to a computer at my age, though I might get along with e-mail, which sounds appealing. Doris Lessing technologystronglong America can be a very hysterical country intellectually and very puritanical, too. You probably have fun in private, but to the rest of the world you seem to hate fun - to be big on agendas and short on spontaneity. The image you present is one of appalling conformity. The thought police is what you are ruled by. Doris Lessing hatefuncountry There are many feminists who work in the media, and they think that feminism is very important. It is in their own lives, but mostly feminism has had an impact among privileged women in the advanced Western countries. For the most part, it hasn't begun to touch the lives of poor and working women in the Third World, and that distresses me. Doris Lessing feministcountrythinking The 1960s was probably the first time in history that young people were recognized as a big group of consumers and as a commercial proposition for Madison Avenue. Advertising played a major role in creating the ethos of that era - the idea that, "Here it is, and you can have it now." I know that many kids thought that the ethos of the 1960s was due to their own peculiar virtues, but, in fact, it had a lot to do with the realities of the marketplace and commerce. Doris Lessing kidsrealitypeople Recently, the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke talked about the ways the lives of human beings will be changed in the next century. At least half of them I didn't understand at all, though I'm sure that kids today would know exactly what he meant. I'm somewhere in the past. I do think, however, that our brains have been damaged by technology. I meet kids who don't seem to be capable of reading a long sentence, much less a long book. Doris Lessing readingkidsbook I hate to sound clichéd, but I do see life as a journey. How else can you see it? Doris Lessing life-journeyhatejourney 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. Doris Lessing 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. Doris Lessing That's what learning is. You suddenly understand something you understood all your life, but in a new way. Doris Lessing 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. Doris Lessing 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. Doris Lessing 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. Doris Lessing Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds. Doris Lessing beginninglegacywisdomhumanity Sentimentality is intolerable because it is false feeling. Doris Lessing falsefeelingbecausesentimentality We like to think we can solve everything, but we can't always. Doris Lessing everythinglikethinkalways
