“Education doesn’t make you happy. And nor does freedom. We don’t become happy just because we are free – if we are, or because we have been educated – if we have. But because education may be the means by which we realize we are happy. It opens our eyes, our ears, tells us where delights are lurking, convinces us that there is only one freedom of any importance whatsoever, that of the mind, and gives us the assurance – the confidence – to walk the path our mind, our educated mind, offers.” (Iris Murdoch)
The British novelist Iris Murdoch had written 26 novels and won the Man Booker Prize in 1978 for The Sea, The Sea.
Other quotes from the movie Iris (2011), based on her life:
“Reading and writing and the preservation of language and its forms, and the kind of eloquence and the kind of beauty which the language is capable of, is something terribly important to the human beings because this is connected to thought.”
“People have obsessions and fears and passions which they don’t admit to. I think every character is interesting and has extremes. It’s the novelist privilege to see how odd everyone is.”
“We need to believe in something divine, without the need for God, something we might call love or goodness.”
“”I feel… as if I’m sailing into darkness.” – (Murdoch becomes ill with Alzheimer’s disease)
- Read an article about Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, in The Telegraph.
