It was always the best way of finding out information; just go and ask a woman who keeps her eyes and ears open and who likes to talk. It always worked. It was no use asking men; they simply were not interested enough in other people and the ordinary doings of people. That is why the real historians of Africa had always been the grandmothers, who remembered the lineage and the stories that went with it. . Alexander McCall Smith
Some Similar Quotes
  1. Popular culture is a place where pity is called compassion, flattery is called love, propaganda is called knowledge, tension is called peace, gossip is called news, and auto-tune is called singing. - Criss Jami

  2. Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear. - Paulo Coelho

  3. How would your life be different if… You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day… You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same. - Steve Maraboli

  4. How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbour says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy. - Marcus Aurelius

  5. A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only... - Criss Jami

More Quotes By Alexander McCall Smith
  1. Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use...

  2. It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought...

  3. Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken her breath away. It was about philosophers who called themselves existentialists and who, as far as Mma Ramotswe could ascertain, lived in France. These French people said...

  4. There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

  5. She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position. Although she still believed that one should...

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