The Sex Question

Emma Goldman, “Has My Life Been Worth While?” (1933)

HAS MY LIFE BEEN WORTH WHILE? Have I wasted my life? Measured by the ordinary standards of value, my life may be considered wasted. I have nothing in social prestige, wealth and power—that holy alliance commonly called success—to show for my struggle of forty-three years. But then, I had never aspired to those treasures. I am therefore spared the bitter disappointment of those who had considered them fixed and unchangeable for all time. Station, power, wealth—how inadequate they have proved! How useless and insecure! The mighty of yesterday now standing before the world as the most successful failures of our […]