Doris Lessingová citáty page 3

„Niet pochýb o tom, že fikcia lepšie vystihuje pravdu.“

„Prílišné zjednodušovanie a hrôzu z flexibility nájdeme všade.“

„Nech už máte urobiť čokoľvek, urobte to teraz. Podmienky na to sú vždy nesplniteľné.“

“Nonsense, it was all nonsense: this whole damned outfit, with its committees, its conferences, its eternal talk, talk, talk, was a great con trick; it was a mechanism to earn a few hundred men and women incredible sums of money.”

Doris Lessingová: Citáty v angličtine

“What is a hero without love for mankind?”

The Summer Before the Dark (1973)

“I was taken around and shown things as a "useful idiot" … that’s what my role was … I can’t understand why I was so gullible.”

Was ist ein Held ohne Menschenliebe! Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Philotas (1759), Act 1, Scene 7 http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/8phts10.txt Misattributed

“If a fish is the movement of water embodied, given shape, then cat is a diagram and pattern of subtle air.”

In interview, quoted in part 1 of Useful Idiots - BBC World Service (7 July 2010) https://web.archive.org/web/20101008193804/http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/documentaries/2010/07/100624_doc_useful_idiots_lenin.shtml part 1 on iTunes https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/useful-idiots/id438700488?i=1000094122641&mt=2

“The point is, that the function of the novel seems to be changing; it has become an outpost of journalism; we read novels for information about areas of life we don’t know — Nigeria, South Africa, the American army, a coal-mining village, coteries in Chelsea, etc. We read to find out what is going on. One novel in five hundred or a thousand has the quality a novel should have to make it a novel — the quality of philosophy.”

Doris Lessing kniha Particularly Cats

Particularly Cats, ch. 2 (1967)

“For the last third of life there remains only work. It alone is always stimulating, rejuvenating, exciting and satisfying.”

Doris Lessing kniha The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 1"
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.”

Käthe Kollwitz, diary entry (1 January 1912)
Misattributed

“Literature is analysis after the event.”

As quoted in Writers on Writing (1986) by Jon Winokur

“You know, whenever women make imaginary female kingdoms in literature, they are always very permissive, to use the jargon word, and easy and generous and self-indulgent, like the relationships between women when there are no men around. They make each other presents, and they have little feasts, and nobody punishes anyone else. This is the female way of going along when there are no men about or when men are not in the ascendant.”

Quoted in Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, ed. Michael Horovitz (1969): Afterwords, section 2

“The Golden Notebook for some reason surprised people but it was no more than you would hear women say in their kitchens every day in any country. … I was really astounded that some people were shocked.”

quoted in "A Talk With Doris Lessing; Lessing Author's Query" (30 March 1980), Minda Bikman, New York Times Book Review

“It is the mark of great people to treat trifles as trifles and important matters as important.”

As quoted in an undated profile at the BBC World Service http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/arts/features/womenwriters/lessing_being.shtml

“Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.”

Denn zu einem großen Manne gehört beides: Kleinigkeiten als Kleinigkeiten, und wichtige Dinge als wichtige Dinge zu behandeln. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Hamburgische Dramaturgie (1767 - 1769), Vierunddreißigstes Stück Den 25. August 1767 http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10055/10055-8.txt Misattributed

“Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time.”

Interview with Amanda Craig, "Grand dame of letters who's not going quietly," The Times, London (23 November 2003)
Varianta: Think wrongly, if you please, but in all cases think for yourself.

“The great secret that all old people share is that you really haven't changed in seventy or eighty years. Your body changes, but you don't change at all. And that, of course, causes great confusion.”

The Guardian, London (7 November 1988)

“All one's life as a young woman one is on show, a focus of attention, people notice you. You set yourself up to be noticed and admired. And then, not expecting it, you become middle-aged and anonymous. No one notices you. You achieve a wonderful freedom. It's a positive thing. You can move about unnoticed and invisible.”

The Sunday Times, London (10 May 1992)

“Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so.”

As quoted in An Uncommon Scold (1989) by Abby Adams, p. 18

“The worst of superstitions is to think
One's own most bearable.”

As quoted in Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006) by Larry Chang, p. 660

“I have found it to be true that the older I've become the better my life has become.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779), Act IV, scene II http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/natws10.txt Variant translation: The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable. Misattributed

“There was a kind of shifting of the balances of my brain, of the way I had been thinking, the same kind of realignment as when, a few days before, words like democracy, liberty, freedom, had faded under pressure of a new sort of understanding of the real movement of the world towards dark, hardening power. I knew, but of course the word, written, cannot convey the quality of this knowing, that whatever already is has its logic and its force. I felt this, like a vision, in a new kind of knowing. And I knew that the cruelty and the spite and the I. I. I. I. of Saul and of Anna were part of the logic of war; and I knew how strong these emotions were, in a way that would never leave me, would become part of how I saw the world.”

Rush Limbaugh, as quoted in Old Age Is Always 15 Years Older Than I Am (2001) by Randy Voorhees
Misattributed

“I think it possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time, outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world-ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects, and creeds. But it was an attempt.”

Doris Lessing kniha The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "Free Women: 4"
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“Man, whence is he? / Too bad to be the work of a god, too good for the work of chance.”

Doris Lessing kniha The Golden Notebook

Introduction (1971)
The Golden Notebook (1962)

“Why were the Europeans bothered about the Soviet Union at all? It was nothing to do with us. China had nothing to do with us. Why were we not building, without reference to the Soviet Union, a good society in our own countries? But no, we were all — in one way or another — obsessed with the bloody Soviet Union, which was a disaster. What people were supporting was failure. And continually justifying it.”

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 61; usually attributed to Doris Lessing in the form: "Man — who is he? Too bad, to be the work of God: Too good for the work of chance!"
Misattributed

“There are certain types of people who are political out of a kind of religious reason […] I think it's fairly common among socialists: They are, in fact, God-seekers, looking for the kingdom of God on earth. A lot of religious reformers have been like that, too. It's the same psychological set, trying to abolish the present in favor of some better future — always taking it for granted that there is a better future. If you don't believe in heaven, then you believe in socialism. When I was in my real Communist phase, I and the people around me really believed — but, of course, this makes us certifiable — that something like 10 years after World War II, the world would be Communist and perfect.”

Salon interview (1997)

“Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.”

quoted in "Doris Lessing on Feminism, Communism and Space Fiction" http://www.nytimes.com/books/99/01/10/specials/lessing-space.html (25 July 1982), Lesley Hazelton, New York Times Book Review

“I do not think writers ought ever to sit down and think they must write about some cause, or theme… If they write about their own experiences, something true is going to emerge.”

I, who ne'er Went for myself a begging, go a borrowing, And that for others. Borrowing's much the same As begging; just as lending upon usury Is much the same as thieving. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779), Act II, scene II http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/natws10.txt Misattributed

“What they [critics of Lessing's switch to science fiction] didn't realize was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.”

"Literature Nobel Awarded to Writer Doris Lessing" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15195588 All Things Considered NPR (11 October 2007)

“It was OK, us being Reds during the war, because we were all on the same side. But then the Cold War started. Almost overnight we became enemies of people who were close friends — they crossed the street to avoid us.”

Boston Book Review interview by Harvey Blume http://www.dorislessing.org/boston.html (February 1998)

“This has been going on for 30 years. I've won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one, so I'm delighted to win them all. It's a royal flush.”

Salon interview (1997)

“Does political correctness have a good side? Yes, it does, for it makes us re-examine attitudes, and that is always useful. The trouble is that, as with all popular movements, the lunatic fringe so quickly ceases to be a fringe; the tail begins to wag the dog. For every woman or man who is quietly and sensibly using the idea to look carefully at our assumptions, there are twenty rabble-rousers whose real motive is a desire for power over others. The fact that they see themselves as antiracists or feminists or whatever does not make them any less rabble-rousers.”

After being chosen as the 2007 recipient of the Nobel Prize For Literature "BBC News", BBC, London (11 October 2007)

“Parents should leave books lying around marked "forbidden" if they want their children to read.”

"Unexamined Mental Attitudes Left Behind By Communism" http://www.dorislessing.org/unexamined.html, in Our Country, Our Culture - The Politics of Political Correctness (1994), Partisan Review Press, edited by Edith Kurzweil and William Philips