Doris Lessing Quotes

I'm not an intellectual in any sense, I have constraints of erudition. I'm not able to deal with things outside my ken, and that makes me irritable. I'm irritable about the fact that I never went to university.

One advantage of exhibiting a hierarchy of systems in this way is that it gives us some idea of the present gaps in both theoretical and empirical knowledge. Adequate theoretical models extend up to about the fourth level, and not much beyond. Empirical knowledge is deficient at practically all levels.

A person who knows nothing about literature may be an ignoramus, but many people don't mind being that.

Nowadays you can't even spank your kids. No, gotta give 'em a time out. My dad would take time out of his busy day... to whip our ass.

Not only must weapons be bought and paid for out of surpluses of capital and labour, but they must also be put to use. For this is the only means that capitalism has at its disposal to achieve the level of devaluation now required. The idea is dreadful in its implications. What better reason could there be to declare that it is time for capitalism to be gone, to give way to some saner mode of production?

To give you an idea how slowly we are leaving Afghanistan, Afghans don't refer to us anymore as 'infidel crusaders.' They refer to us as 'Irish relatives.'

To give you an idea how well I was doing at the time I quit, I was the only one who knew I quit.

You can't change the way people think, all you can do is give them a tool, the use of which will change their thinking.

Merely that you start off with ideas buzzing around in your head, and then you try to give them the simpler, more graceful shape, of a feeling that a reader might share. You learn to sing with, not argue at, your possible readers.

Nobody needs a movie to give them an idea.

I'll tell you an explanation that I find commonly overrated and speculative in the extreme: the idea that things that succeed in popular culture do that because they hit the temper of the times.

Usually you just use these words: "I give you my, I make this commitment to you, I honor this idea between us." For me, commitment boils down to honor. Because you make a commitment to protect our environment, you make a commitment to species preservation, you make a commitment to stop things like human trafficking. You make a commitment to stop smoking, to eat better. Typically, something that is positive. A positive notion of honor.

It's very useful to have a good grasp of all the big ideas in hard and soft science. A, it gives perspective. B, it gives a way for you to organize and file away experience in your head, so to speak.

Don't stop. Narrow your focus to one idea, and make it work. That will give birth to all of the others. All you can do is plant the seed and water it.

Giving me a a new idea is like handing a cretin a gun, but I do thank you anyhow, bang bang.

Laughter lifts our spirits, surprises and sometime shocks our expectations, allows us to cross boundaries, reorders our priorities, and gives us access to ideas and associations we rarely ever thought to have.

You have no idea what an appetite it gives one, being executed.

Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

I don't want to succumb to the idea that for the generation, or generations, raised on television, the text is irrelevant or so intimidating that they won't deal with it. If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.

God wants to increase you financially, by giving you promotions, fresh ideas and creativity

You don't solve anything ever, really. You simply state a problem which, when you're lucky, gives you some idea of what possible problems you can - it indicates, you know, your future headaches.

It is easy to specify the individual objects of admiration in these grand scenes; but it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder, astonishment, and devotion, which fill and elevate the mind.

There's an older generation that feels like they know what the future should be. And then there's your generation that may have an idea of what the future should be, but that could evolve.

Some physicists solve that problem of the necessity of finely tuned physical constants ... by invoking the anthropic principle, saying, well, here we are, we exist, we have to be in the kind of universe capable of giving rise to us. That in itself is, I think, unsatisfying, and as John Lennox rightly says, some physicists solve that by the multiverse idea-the idea that our universe is just one of many universes.