QuoteProject
'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.
Emma Goldman
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Beliefs are not fixed; they evolve and change over time as we grow and learn.

Emma Goldman's quote emphasizes the dynamic nature of human beliefs, suggesting that understanding and conviction are not absolute but rather an ongoing journey of discovery and questioning. By contrasting human intellect with the finalities of gods and governments, she implies that true understanding is flexible and subject to change, reflecting the complexities of life and individual experience.

Themes

BeliefIntellectProcessPhilosophyChange

In practice

Example use cases

During a philosophy class discussion about the nature of belief.

More from Emma Goldman

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.
Emma GoldmanRead
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
Emma GoldmanRead
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
Emma GoldmanRead
John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?
Emma GoldmanRead
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.
Emma GoldmanRead
If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
Emma GoldmanRead

Similar quotes

For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.
F. Scott FitzgeraldRead
EACH DAY OF HUMAN life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature’s grand design-do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things.
Morihei UeshibaRead
If you believe, as the Greeks did, that man is at the mercy of the gods, then you write tragedy. The end is inevitable from the beginning. But if you believe that man can solve his own problems and is at nobody's mercy, then you will probably write melodrama.
Lillian HellmanRead
If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.
Thomas JeffersonRead
We can't equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.
Jimmy CarterRead
In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Emma Goldman | QuoteProject