Ellen Key

“Corporal punishment is as humiliating for him who gives it as for him who receives it; it is useless.”

“Love is moral even without legal marriage, but marriage is immoral without love.”

“At every step the child should be allowed to meet the real experiences of life; the thorns should not be plucked from his roses.”

“The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.”

“When one has once fully entered the realm of love, the world — no matter how imperfect — becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for love.”

“All education and all attempts to reform mankind are pointless without the appropriate economic basis.”

“The nineteenth century has been the century of the woman's emancipation, the twentieth will be that of the child's.”

“Everything, everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.”

“To be able to be caught up into the world of thought—that is being educated.”

“The belief in the sanctity of private property has been the main source of the world's unhappiness.”

“It is immoral to compel a man to marry a woman he does not love.”