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There's only one real sin, and that is to persuade oneself that the second-best is anything but the second-best.

— 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)

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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.