“Already as a small child I criticized the injustice of adults and I experienced as a blatant contradiction the fact that everything was offered to me whereas so much was denied to the other children. My criticism sharpened as the years went by and the feeling of revolt against the many proofs of love around me grew apace.”

— Alexandra Kollontai

The Autobiography of a Sexually Emancipated Communist Woman (1926)

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Alexandra Kollontai 32

Soviet diplomat 1872–1952

William Hartnell (1908–1975) English actor

I Felt Like the Pied Piper

“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

“A wonder of such nature I experienced as a child of 4 or 5 years, when my father showed me a compass.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, "Autobiographical Notes" (1949)
Context: A wonder of such nature I experienced as a child of 4 or 5 years, when my father showed me a compass. That this needle behaved in such a determined way did not at all fit into the nature of events, which could find a place in the unconscious world of concepts (effect connected with direct "touch"). I can still remember—or at least believe I can remember—that this experience made a deep and lasting impression upon me. Something deeply hidden had to be behind things. What man sees before him from infancy causes no reaction of this kind; he is not surprised over the falling of bodies, concerning wind and rain, nor concerning the moon or about the fact that the moon does not fall down, nor concerning the differences between living and non-living matter.
At the age of 12 I experienced a second wonder of a totally different nature: in a little book dealing with Euclidean plane geometry, which came into my hands at the beginning of a schoolyear. Here were assertions, as for example the intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which—though by no means evident—could nevertheless be proved with such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity and certainty made an indescribable impression upon me. That the axioms had to be accepted unproved did not disturb me. In any case it was quite sufficient for me if I could peg proofs upon propositions the validity of which did not seem to me to be dubious.

“In later life I was charged by many with being an agitator; some of my friends in defending me against assault denied that I was an agitator; they were wrong, I was an agitator and as such did all that lay in my power with voice and pen to agitate against the injustices practices on workingmen and women.”

Terence V. Powderly (1849–1924) American mayor

[Powderly, Terence, 'The Path I Trod: The Autobiography of Terence V. Powderly, 1940, Columbia University Press, 9781163178164, https://archive.org/stream/pathitrodautobio00powdrich, 38]