Daily Inspiration Quote by Voltairine de Cleyre

There is a cold clarity in de Cleyre's refusal to beg for freedom. The line pivots on a brutal diagnosis: power does not gift emancipation to the powerless, especially when the powerless are expected to perform gratitude for scraps. "I never expect men to give us liberty" is not a swipe at individual men so much as an indictment of a system built to keep women petitioning, persuading, and waiting. It strips away the comforting fantasy that justice arrives because the dominant group finally develops a conscience.

Then she lands the sharper blade: "women, we are not worth it until we take it". The provocation is intentional. De Cleyre isn't claiming women lack inherent worth; she's attacking the social training that equates worth with permission. In that framework, rights are treated like a prize handed down for good behavior. Her phrasing flips it: worth is demonstrated through action, through the willingness to incur conflict, disapproval, even punishment. The subtext is about political maturity: liberty isn't a compliment, it's a confrontation.

Context matters. Writing in the late 19th and early 20th century, de Cleyre lived through the suffrage struggle, labor unrest, and the anarchist critique of state and patriarchal authority. As an activist steeped in radical politics, she distrusted incremental reforms that depended on male lawmakers, employers, or moral arbiters. The quote is a rallying cry against respectability politics: stop auditioning for inclusion. Organize, resist, seize autonomy. Freedom, in her worldview, is not granted; it's practiced into existence.