“You will never get right until you start right.”
Sex Slavery (1890)
Context: Now for the remedy. It is in one word, the only word that ever brought equity anywhere — LIBERTY! Centuries upon centuries of liberty is the only thing that will cause the disintegration and decay of these pestiferous ideas. Liberty was all that calmed the bloodwaves of religious persecution! You cannot cure serfhood by any other substitution. Not for you to say "in this way shall the race love." Let the race alone.
Will there not be atrocious crimes? Certainly. He is a fool who says there will not be. But you can't stop them by committing the arch-crime and setting a block between the spokes of Progress-wheels. You will never get right until you start right.
As for the final outcome, it matters not one iota. I have my ideal, and it is very pure, and very sacred to me. But yours, equally sacred, may be different and we may both be wrong. But certain am I that with free contract, that form of sexual association will survive which is best adapted to time and place, thus producing the highest evolution of the type. Whether that shall be monogamy, variety, or promiscuity matters naught to us; it is the business of the future, to which we dare not dictate.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Voltairine de Cleyre 78
American anarchist writer and feminist 1866–1912Related quotes
There's a big difference.
Website
Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Cauldron (2007), Chapter 27 (pp. 248-249)
Why Vyjayanthimala has 'nothing to say' about today's heroines
Source: Eight Little Piggies (1993) "A Reflective Prologue", p. 14
