Emma Goldman "Intellectual Proletarians" (1914)
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The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated. And if, as in the case of Zola, Ibsen and Tolstoy, they compelled their time to accept them, it was due to their extraordinary genius and even more so to the awakening and seeking of a small minority for new truths, to whom these men were the inspiration and intellectual support.
— Emma Goldman
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated. And if, as in the case of Zola, Ibsen and Tolstoy, they compelled their time to accept them, it was due to their extraordinary genius and even more so to the awakening and seeking of a small minority for new truths, to whom these men were the inspiration and intellectual support." in the context of "Emma Goldman "Intellectual Proletarians" (1914)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Leo Tolstoy" (Quotes about Tolstoy: Sorted alphabetically by author or source)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
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About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
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