Doris Lessing Quotes
This is a time when it is frightening to be alive, when it is hard to think of human beings as rational creatures. Everywhere we look we see brutality, stupidity, until it seems that there is nothing else to be seen but that--a descent into barbarism, everywhere, which we are unable to check. But I think that while it is true there is a general worsening, it is precisely because things are so frightening we become hypnotized, and do not notice--or if we notice, belittle--equally strong forces on the other side, the forces, in short, of reason, sanity and civilization.
Lessing, Doris. "The Small Personal Voice." Declaration, edited by Tom Maschler, MacGibbon & Kee, 1957.
He was ironically observing that most animals and primitive humans, there is fighting among the species but rarely do the fight to the death. One usually gives up, and the other will let him retire from the fight. The fighter who is getting the worst of it, will retire from the battle. However, “civilized” humans will fight for principles and ideas often to the death. “Civilized humans” also think ahead and will strive to exterminate an enemy and kill even after surrender or submission.
Doris May Lessing CH OMG (née Tayler; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remained until moving in 1949 to London, England. Her novels include The Grass Is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–1969), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos: Archives (1979–1983).
