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Daily Inspiration Quote by Germaine Greer

"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night"

About this Quote

Greer’s line refuses the Instagram version of progress: the idea that enlightenment is a lifestyle upgrade, not a bruise. “One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night” is built like a warning and a dare. It strips hope of its marketing sheen and ties it to endurance, error, and the humiliations that come with real change. The syntax matters. “One may not” has the cold formality of a rule, not a pep talk. “Save by” sounds legalistic, almost puritan: there is no loophole, no shortcut, no enlightened bypass.

Coming from an activist whose work rattled the comfortable certainties of second-wave feminism, the subtext is political as much as personal. Liberation isn’t a seminar you attend; it’s the messy, often isolating process of confronting what you’ve been taught to desire, fear, and tolerate. “Night” carries the weight of backlash, internal conflict, and the social penalties of refusing your assigned role. It also hints at the psychic cost: the period when old narratives have been dismantled but new ones haven’t fully formed, leaving you in a liminal darkness that can look, from the outside, like failure.

The line works because it refuses catharsis without contradiction. It doesn’t romanticize suffering, but it insists on its inevitability when you challenge entrenched power or remake a life. Dawn isn’t a gift; it’s a consequence. And the night, in Greer’s telling, isn’t an obstacle to the path. It is the path.

Quote Details

TopicNew Beginnings
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Greer, Germaine. (n.d.). One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-not-reach-the-dawn-save-by-the-path-of-62217/

Chicago Style
Greer, Germaine. "One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night." FixQuotes. Accessed February 3, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-not-reach-the-dawn-save-by-the-path-of-62217/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One may not reach the dawn save by the path of the night." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-may-not-reach-the-dawn-save-by-the-path-of-62217/. Accessed 3 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer (born January 29, 1939) is a Activist from Australia.

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