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About this quote

What does it mean?
Revolutionary change should aim to protect human life, dignity, liberty, and well-being.
In plain terms
Change should make life better and safer for everyone.
What can you take from it?
Focus on human dignity in social change.

Where it applies

  • policy advocacy
  • human rights work
  • community organizing

Putting it to work

  • prioritize human welfare in proposals
  • protect individual rights

Questions to consider

  • What makes change truly revolutionary?
  • How do we measure human dignity?

Another view

Specific definitions of well-being vary across cultures.

More from Emma Goldman

  1. The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

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  2. Thus Dante's motto over Inferno applies with equal force to marriage: 'Ye who enter here leave all hope behind.'

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  3. The powers know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. ... An army and navy repr…

    Permalink to quote #95

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