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What's terrible is to pretend that the second-rate is the 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 The Golden Notebook (1962)

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More quotes by Doris Lessing

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

Martha Quest (1952)

That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way.

The Four-Gated City (1969)

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

Wisdom for the Soul: Five Millennia of Prescriptions for Spiritual Healing (2006)

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

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

The Golden Notebook (1962)

All Doris Lessing quotes →

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Doris Lessing (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.