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
Our society is dependent on some precarious mechanisms, and they are very dicey. They can easily collapse.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the fragility of societal structures and the dangers of relying on unstable systems.
Doris Lessing's quote emphasizes the precarious nature of the mechanisms that support society. It serves as a reminder that many aspects of our social systems are fragile and can fail unexpectedly, suggesting the need for awareness and caution in maintaining the stability of these structures.
In practice
In a speech discussing the importance of institutional reforms.
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.
In 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Society was cut in two: those who had nothing united in common envy; those who had anything united in common terror.
It is life, more than death, that has no limits.
It is a monstrous thing that I will say, but I will say it all the same: I find in many things more restraint and order in my morals than in my opinions, and my lust less depraved than my reason.
The real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life? The abortionist who reassembles the arms and legs of a tiny baby to make sure all its parts have been torn from its mother's body can hardly doubt whether it is a human being. The real question for him and for all of us is whether that tiny human life has a God-given right to be protected by the law - the same right we have.
In our period, they say there is free speech. They say there is no penalty for poets, There is no penalty for writing poems. They say this. This is the penalty.
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact.
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