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I am late with the new Doris Lessing [The Golden Notebook]. I make no apology: it has taken me a long time to read (568 pages of close print) and at the end of it all I feel cheated. This talented writer has attempted an experiment which has failed, essayed a scale which is beyond her....This is a book of revolt – political, social, sexual. Anna [the heroine] became a Communist in South Africa, seeing in Communism a "moral energy" not to be found in other creeds or in the long-entrenched privileged class. Anna is also concerned with being a "free woman" – rebelling against traditional male dominance – and with achieving maximal erotic fulfilment....There is no doubt about the great moral virtues here – intelligence, honesty, integrity – but it is the aesthetic virtues that seem to be lacking. The characters do not really interest us: when we have dialogue it is strangely unnatural … Mrs Lessing’s old singleness of vision, her strength as a writer, is not to be found here. [Review in the English provincial newspaper the Yorkshire Post, 1962]

 

Anthony Burgess

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Doris Lessing was nothing less than the goddess of literature herself for young women like myself aspiring to write in the 1970s. Her classic, The Golden Notebook, directly addressed the contradictions in women's lives in a way that was sophisticated, insightful and dispassionate.... When I started writing novels in the early 1980s, I often felt pressure from women to depict wholesome female role models. The pressure never worked, partly because Doris Lessing had gone before and blazed a path for all of us as readers, as women, as people.

 

Doris Lessing

 

The real Scott is to be found in his notebooks and working papers, where he elaborated so patiently at turning the mess of his life to gold. "To observe one must be unwary," he wrote, so he took experience straight without a notebook. But he later hoarded it like a miser and pored over it like a monk illuminating a manuscript and produced enduring work. When a writer explores emotions to danger point like Scott, it is worse than philistine to talk about weakness of character. The whole moral test is in the books. The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the Night are all the character reference a writer could want.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."

 

Iamblichus of Chalcis

 

"His strength was as a thinker and a writer, a man of honour, with great moral courage. He had a way with people, enormous charm, integrity and character. He was self-possessed, had a good strong voice, and won the confidence of those who dealt with him." - Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, on 25 February 2006, in his eulogy to Rajaratnam.

 

Sinnathamby Rajaratnam

 

Surely just about everybody has faced a moral dilemma and secretly wished, "If only somebody -- somebody I trusted -- could just tell me what to do!" Wouldn't this be morally inauthentic? Aren't we responsible for making our own moral decisions? Yes, but the virtues of "do it yourself" moral reasoning have their limits, and if you decide, after conscientious consideration, that your moral decision is to delegate further moral decisions in your life to a trusted expert, then you have made your own moral decision. You have decided to take advantage of the division of labor that civilization makes possible and get the help of expert specialists.

 

Daniel C. Dennett