Doris Lessing Quotes

I've been coming to America since 1970, and it's like my second home, but I've never felt such a divided country, ever. I didn't think it would get to this point, and it breaks my heart.

We don't have a unitary society anymore, you know; it's very fragmented. I look up and down my block in Silverlake and there is a different universe in every house.

I come from a fragmented society. A country proud to serve as a bridge between Europe and Asia yet unable to bridge its own differences.

It bothers me when I look at Israeli society, on the divisiveness in it, and to polarization. I'm not just talking about left-right... but how individuals behave towards each other.

Our culture is just too comfortable in creating these kind of divisions between culture.

England's not a bad country? It's just a mean, cold, ugly, divided, tired, clapped-out, post-imperial, post- industrial slag-heap covered in polystyrene hamburger cartons. 286

In America, we're in a divided country.

Watching our entire country implode under the self-serving ideologies of those so eager to claim everything but the Constitution as their guide leaves at least half of us without a home. We may live on the same land, but our nation and the citizens of that nation have been exiled into a national wilderness.

Wholeness does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. Knowing this gives me hope that human wholeness - mine, yours, ours - need not be a utopian dream, if we can use devastation as a seedbed for new life

In America, we have a bifurcated country, we have a polarized country. One of the reasons I think it's polarized is because of identity politics on the left.

I think we're on the wrong path in this country and have been for a while. People are in their camps divided by region, economic situation, race, religion, ideology. And there's a lot of just staying in your camp using technology to bolster your case without actually debating with other people, without discussing.

Pieces. Isn't that what all of life is anyway? Shards. Bits. Moments. Am I less because I have fewer, or do the few I have mean more?

It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.

The globalized nature of production and innovation means that the benefits don't necessarily stay in the country where the investments are made.

The first thing that I've got to think about is: What does a Donald Trump presidency mean for the people of my state and for the people of this country? And for the people of the world? I think it would be an absolute disaster. It would be beyond a disaster.

In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.

If "socialism" is defined as "ownership of the means of production"--and this is both the orthodox and the only rigorous definition--then the United States is the first truly Socialist country.

What Abraham Lincoln had to face was a culturally and politically cohesive bloc of states comprising half the country, refusing to discuss even the limitation of slavery; while he had only the most feeble means of enforcement. The British and the French could do their emancipating at a distance; Lincoln had armed resistance almost literally at his doorstep.

I am determined to try to rebuild and renew this country in ways that will build community and level the playing field. To me, that means making certain that the fight to preserve our civil liberties is waged, making certain the fight against discrimination is waged, making certain that women have opportunity in this country.

When you're out there in America, meeting with regular people, it's a pretty mellow, relaxed, kind-hearted country. The direction from the top, from the President, is following mean-spirited tendencies: fear and undue caution and distrust of the other, so it's very depressing.

We never get any gratitude for what we do. We just are constantly ripped. We are constantly complained about. We are constantly attacked. And people are fed up with it. People are fed up being told they haven't done enough, that they don't do enough, that they don't care enough, that they're mean-spirited, that they're extremists, when this is the most loving and charitable, the most giving country the world has ever seen.

I think there's this great disconnect between youth culture and politics, which is a product of how our capitalist system works. I mean, a lot of the kids I know are really politically involved. They really care about politics. I think we're going to have an incredible impact on how politics end up shaking this country.

Colombia is a different country today. The state is now present in every single corner, the drug lords are in jail or dead. So we have the means to guarantee the security of FARC politicians.

You mean, like a book?

The more perfect our means of direct experience, the more easily we are caught by the dangerous illusion that perceiving is tantamount to knowing and understanding.