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
Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote suggests that despite society's efforts to suppress it, prostitution represents a perverse victory of strict moral judgment.
Emma Goldman's quote highlights the paradoxical nature of societal attitudes towards prostitution, indicating that even as it is demonized and oppressed, its existence reveals a triumph of the very moral framework that seeks to control it. This suggests that the struggle against repression ironically reinforces the validity of what is being suppressed, prompting reflection on the complexities of morality, freedom, and human nature.
Themes
ProstitutionPuritanismFreedomMoralitySociety
In practice
Example use cases
Discussing the topic of moral hypocrisy at a philosophy class.
More from Emma Goldman
All quotes βNo 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
Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Albert SchweitzerRead
We have a tendency to think of war as this quasi-mystical thing, and that interpretation flattens the experience - by using different perspectives, I wanted to open a place for readers to compare and contrast, to make judgments, to engage.
Phil KlayRead
... he preferred his own madness, to the regular sanity. He rejoiced in his own madness, he was free. He did not want that old sanity of the world, which was become so repulsive. He rejoiced in the new-found world of his madness. It was so fresh and delicate and so satisfying.
D. H. LawrenceRead
What if a dawn of a doom of a dream bites this universe in two, peels forever out of his grave, and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
E. E. CummingsRead
Knowledge comes through likeness. And so because the soul may know everything, it is never at rest until it comes to the original idea, in which all things are one. And there it comes to rest in God.
Meister EckhartRead
profanity and obscenity entitle people who don't want unpleasant information to close their ears and eyes to you.
Kurt VonnegutRead