I am a person who continually destroys the possibilities of a future because of the numbers of alternative viewpoints I can focus on the present.
Doris LessingRead
I'm always astounded at the way we automatically look at what divides and separates us. We never look at what people have in common.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the human tendency to focus on differences rather than commonalities.
Doris Lessing's quote reflects on a fundamental aspect of human interaction, where individuals often gravitate towards identifying divisions and separations rather than recognizing the shared experiences and values that unite them. It calls for a more conscious effort to acknowledge and celebrate what binds people together, promoting understanding and empathy in a world where divisive perspectives can dominate.
Themes
UnityCommonalityDiversityEmpathyCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech addressing social unity, this quote can remind the audience to focus on shared values.
More from Doris Lessing
All quotes βIn the writing process, the more the story cooks, the better. The brain works for you even when you are at rest. I find dreams particularly useful. I myself think a great deal before I go to sleep and the details sometimes unfold in the dream.
Doris LessingRead
Humanity's legacy of stories and storytelling is the most precious we have. All wisdom is in our stories and songs. A story is how we construct our experiences. At the very simplest, it can be: 'He/she was born, lived, died.' Probably that is the template of our stories - a beginning, middle, and end. This structure is in our minds.
Doris LessingRead
There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.
Doris LessingRead
The World War I, I'm a child of World War I. And I really know about the children of war. Because both my parents were both badly damaged by the war. My father, physically, and both mentally and emotionally. So, I know exactly what it's like to be brought up in an atmosphere of a continual harping on the war.
Doris LessingRead
You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.
Doris LessingRead
Similar quotes
It is not that the girl is unfit for everything, it is that she is not of this world.
Gabriel Garcia MarquezRead
It saddens me that Christians need to be reminded that awe is owed also to those who disagree with them, who believe otherwise than they do.
Marilynne RobinsonRead
Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.
Alfred North WhiteheadRead
Defend an institution. Follow the courts or the media, or a court or a newspaper. Do not speak of 'our institutions' unless you are making them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions don't protect themselves. They go down like dominoes unless each is defended from the beginning.
Timothy D. SnyderRead
We evaluate others with a Godlike justice, but we want them to evaluate us with a Godlike compassion.
Sydney J. HarrisRead
The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.
Ogden NashRead