Friday, October 22, 2010

Meandering freely . . .

Today is the birthday of Doris May Lessing (born 22 October 1919), writer. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

"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 . . . this is a disease of the mind, the way I see it."
- Doris Lessing

"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 vise versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. "
- Doris Lessing

"A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself."
- Doris Lessing

"Any human anywhere will blossom in a hundred unexpected talents and capacities simply by being given the opportunity to do so."
- Doris Lessing

"That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way."
- Doris Lessing

Lessing image source (1)


Today is the birthday of Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996), psychologist and writer.

"Turn on, Tune in, Drop out."
- Timothy Leary

"You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind."
- Timothy Leary

"If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people."
- Timothy Leary

"Our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos..."
- Timothy Leary

"We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history... The problem is that no one is giving them anything fresh. They've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go."
- Timothy Leary

"Think for yourself and question authority."
- Timothy Leary

Leary image source (1)

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