Category: Thought

A sane being wished for peace and serenity, not to be the mortar in which the ingredients of destiny are finely ground.

David Brin, The Uplift War (1987).

There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.

Doris Lessing, Introduction to The Golden Notebook (1962).

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Gore Vidal, The Decline and Fall of the American Empire (1992).

Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-​appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. It is a heritage of communism, but they don’t seem to see this.

Doris Lessing, The Sunday Times (London, May 10, 1992).

Humans hold their dogmas and biases too tightly, and we only think that our opponents are dogmatic! But we all need criticism. Criticism is the only known antidote to error.

“Interview de David Brin” at ActuSF.com (March 2008).

If you cannot or will not imagine the results of your actions, there’s no way you can act morally or responsibly. Little kids can’t do it; babies are morally monsters — completely greedy. Their imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.

Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Magician,” an interview with The Guardian (2005).