Authors:
  1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. D
  4. Doris Lessing
  5. War

Doris Lessing Quotes about War

All Doris Lessing Quotes Age Aging Art Children Consciousness Country Critics Culture Desire Feelings Fighting Giving Growing Up Hate Inspirational Life Literature Love Memories Morning Pain Past Perspective Pleasure Quality Reading Running School Sleep Talent Truth Understanding War quotes Worry Writing
I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.

I'll be pleased when I'm dead. That will let me off worrying about all these wars.

Doris Lessing
War, Worry, Let Me
"In their own words: literary giants who died this year" by Jess Sutcliffe, www.theguardian.com. December 28, 2013.

Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

Doris Lessing
War, Distance, World

The first casualty in any war is the truth. In World War II, I was part of a group of people who used to meet once a week with the sole purpose of analyzing the news and trying to work out what we weren't being told. We thought that we were clever, but we had absolutely no idea what was really going on. It was only years later that we learned the true story.

Doris Lessing
Clever, War, People
Source: progressive.org

I wanted to write about my mother as she should have been if she had not been messed up by World War I.

Doris Lessing
Mother, War, Writing

In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

Doris Lessing
War, Past, People

When there's a war, people get married.

Doris Lessing
War, People, Married

On the news two dozen events of fantastically different importance are announced in exactly the same tone of voice. The voice doesn't discriminate between a divorce, a horse race, a war in the Middle East.

Doris Lessing
Horse, War, Divorce

The storyteller is deep inside everyone of us. The story-maker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is attacked by war, by the horrors that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise . . . but the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed. It is the storyteller, the dream-maker, the myth-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.

Doris Lessing
Dream, Hurt, War
"A hunger for books" by Doris Lessing, www.theguardian.com. December 8, 2007.

My father was in the First World War.

Doris Lessing
Father, War, World
Doris Lessing (2003). “A Home for the Highland Cattle and the Antheap”, p.142, Broadview Press

The automatic reaction of practically any young person is, at once, against authority. That, I think, began in the First World War because of the trenches, and the incompetence of the people on all fronts.

Doris Lessing
War, Thinking, People
"A Notorious Life". Interview with Dwight Garner, www.salon.com. November 11, 1997.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroyeth much good.

Doris Lessing
Bible, War, Weapons
Doris Lessing (1999). “Ecclesiastes or, The Preacher”, p.32, Canongate Books

People who have lived through a war know that as it approaches, an at first secret, unacknowledged, elation begins, as if an almost inaudible drum is beating ... an awful, illicit, violent excitement is abroad. Then the elation becomes too strong to be ignored or overlooked: then everyone is possessed by it.

Doris Lessing
Strong, War, People
Doris Lessing (2013). “Prisons We Choose to Live Inside”, p.10, Harper Collins

So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.

Doris Lessing
War, Years, Long
DORIS LESSING (1969). “THE FOUR-GATED CITY”

I wonder why do wars suddenly start and suddenly stop, and why do we Brits and you Americans get involved in some of them and not in others? Is it possible that the arms manufacturers quietly foment wars without us knowing? Dropping bombs is a very profitable business for them. Gore Vidal was talking about this the other day, and he made a lot of sense. Whenever American policy seems inscrutable, he said, remember the military-industrial complex. He's the one who should have been President.

Doris Lessing
War, President, Remember
Source: progressive.org

You May Also Like: