“Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.”

Source: The Golden Notebook

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Doris Lessing 94
British novelist, poet, playwright, librettist, biographer … 1919–2013

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“Very few people can succeed in their careers without having to manage, supervise and lead other people”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

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“There are very few jokes about sociologists.”

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“Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity”

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“People who have no vices, have very few virtues.”

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According to The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln (1867) by F. B. Carpenter, Lincoln quoted this as having been said to him by a fellow-passenger in a stagecoach. See also "Washington during the War", Macmillan's Magazine 6:24 http://books.google.com/books?id=rB4AAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA24&dq=folks (May 1862)
Posthumous attributions
Variant: It's my experience that folks who have no vices have generally very few virtues.

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