Doris Lessing Quotes

Awareness without action is worthless.

A learned person will become noble only when he or she has put into real practice what has been learned, instead of mere words.

Don't let your learning lead to knowledge. Let your learning lead to action.

Education without execution is extinction

The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.

Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.

We forget that the accumulation of knowledge and the holding of convictions must finally result in the application of that knowledge and those convictions to life itself.

Since we are not permitted to act, we are obliged to know.

Books are totally useless unless you take their advice. If you just keep reading them, thinking "that's so insightful! that changes everything," but never actually doing anything different, then pretty quickly the feeling will wear off and you'll start searching for another book to fill the void.

Reading is good, action is better.

It is time to face real world, even if it is harder and painful. I'd rather fly and crash, than just snuggle and sleep.

Analysis can tell us what is required, but it cannot make us act.

If one does not act, one cannot understand.

Knowledge is vain and fruitless which is not reduced to practice.

Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Positive wish: 'The sun will come out tomorrow.' Negative reality: 'Yeah, and it will flash brand-new daylight on the same old mess unless something is done to clean it up.

Worst is the one who knows better and does nothing.

An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory!

Unless you move, the place where you are is the place where you will always be.

In practical matters the end is not mere speculative knowledge of what is to be done, but rather the doing of it. It is not enough to know about Virtue, then, but we must endeavor to possess it, and to use it, or to take any other steps that may make.

a time has come in our history when what is known has little connection with what is done.

Illusions are the truths we live by until we know better.

However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant

How many years you have to keep on doing, until you know what to do and how to do!