Speak, speak, speak, & remember that whenever anyone's liberty to speak is denied, your liberty is denied also, & your place is where the attack is.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
Is it not enough that 'things are cruel and blind'? Must we also be cruel and blind?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions whether we should mirror the cruelty and blindness of the world around us.
Voltairine De Cleyre's quote challenges individuals to reflect on their own behavior in the face of a harsh world. It suggests that while the circumstances around us may be cruel and indifferent, we have the choice not to adopt those same traits, urging us to strive for compassion and awareness instead of succumbing to a negative mindset.
Themes
CrueltyBlindnessCompassionAwarenessChoice
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about ethical behavior in the face of social injustices.
More from Voltairine De Cleyre
All quotes βAnarchism, to me, means not only the denial of authority, not only a new economy, but a revision of the principles of morality. It means the development of the individual as well as the assertion of the individual. It means self-responsibility, and not leader worship.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that "freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license," and they will define freedom out of existence.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
I think it can be shown that the law makes ten criminals where it restrains one.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
The question of souls is oldβwe demand our bodies, now. We are tired of promises, god is deaf, and his church is our worst enemy.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
Government is as unreal, as intangible, as unapproachable as God. Try it, if you don't believe it. Seek through the legislative halls of America and find, if you can, the Government. In the end you will be doomed to confer with the agent, as before.
Voltairine De CleyreRead
Similar quotes
While the Nation has forbidden monopoly by one set of laws it has been creating them by another. Patent laws, valuable as they may be in some respects, often father monopoly.
Robert H. JacksonRead
The failure of market catallactics in no way denies the following truth: given sufficient knowledge the optimal decisions can always be found by scanning over all the attainable states of the world and selecting the one which according to the postulated ethical welfare function is best. The solution 'exists'; the problem is how to 'find' it.
Paul SamuelsonRead
Such is the condition of life that something is always wanting to happiness. In youth we have warm hopes, which are soon blasted by rashness and negligence, and great designs which are defeated by inexperience. In age, we have knowledge and prudence, without spirit to exert, or motives to prompt them; we are able to plan schemes, and regulate measures, but have not time remaining to bring them to completion.
Lyndon B. JohnsonRead
The role of the intellectual cannot be to excuse the violence of one side and condemn that of the other.
Albert CamusRead
It was a good thing to have a couple of thousand people all rigid and frozen together, in the palm of one's hand.
Charles DickensRead
One keeps forgetting old age up to the very brink of the grave.
Sidonie Gabrielle ColetteRead