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Emma Goldman Quotes

All Quotes Anarchy Army Arrogance Art Atheism Atheist Authority Capitalism Character Children Christianity Country Crime Democracy Earth Education Effort Energy Evil Fighting Giving Growth Harmony Hate Heart Heaven Home Honesty Humanity Husband Ignorance Independence Injustice Inspirational Integrity Jealousy Joy Justice Liberty Life Love Lying Marriage Military Pain Patriotism Peace Persecution Personality Philosophy Politics Purpose Quality Reality Responsibility Revolution Sacrifice Slavery Social Change Soul Struggle Today Training Understanding Violence Vision War Weakness Wealth

Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your

Men and women ... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters. Like naïve children you put your trust in your political leaders. You make it possible for them to creep into your confidence, only to have them betray you to the first bidder. But even where there is no direct betrayal, the labour politicians make common cause with your enemies to keep you in leash, to prevent your direct action. The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.

Crush, Children, Betrayal

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

Political, Voting, Nerd

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

Peace, Educational, Book

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.33, Sheba Blake Publishing

If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution.

Want, Revolution, Can Not

People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.

Independent, People, Independence

Emma Goldman (1914). “The Social Significance of the Modern Drama”

I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love and freedom in motherhood.

Sex, Motherhood, Support

Emma Goldman, Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, Jessica M. Moran (2003). “Emma Goldman: Made for America, 1890-1901”, p.43, Univ of California Press

It is organized violence on top which creates individual violence at the bottom. It is the accumulated indignation against organized wrong, organized crime, organized injustice, which drives the political offender to act.

Political, Violence, Injustice

Address to the Jury, delivered 9 July 1917, New York

'What I believe' is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect.

Believe, Government, Anarchy

Emma Goldman, Candace Falk (2008). “Emma Goldman”, p.340, University of Illinois Press

"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.

Government, Essence, Majority Rule

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.31, 谷月社

The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.

War, Apology, Law

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.33, 谷月社

A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.

Dancing, Revolution

"Living My Life". Book by Emma Goldman, 1931.

Some people never seem to learn from experience. No matter how often they had seen the lion devour the lamb, they continued to cling to the hope that the nature of the beast might change. If only the lion could get to know the lamb better, they argued, or talk matters over.

Power, Reality, Thinking

Emma Goldman (2011). “Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)”, p.487, Cosimo, Inc.

How long would authority ... exist, if not for the willingness of the mass to become soldiers, policemen, jailers, and hangmen.

Long, Soldier, Authority

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.42, 谷月社

Liberty will not descend to a people, a people must raise themselves to liberty...

People, Liberty, Raises

"Lacon" by Emma Goldman, Vol. II; CLXXVIII, 1837.

Public school - where the human mind is drilled and manipulated into submission to various social and moral spooks, and thus fitted to continue our system of exploitation and oppression.

School, Mind, Moral

Emma Goldman, Candace Falk, Barry Pateman, Jessica M. Moran (2004). “Emma Goldman: Making speech free, 1902-1909”, p.238, Univ of California Press

wealth means power: the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade.

Crush, Mean, Wealth

Emma Goldman (1969). “Anarchism: And Other Essays”, p.54, Courier Corporation

The State, every government whatever its form, character or color - be it absolute or constitutional, monarchy or republic, Fascist, Nazi or bolshevik - is by its very nature conservative, static, intolerant of change and opposed to it.

Character, Government, Color

Emma Goldman (1998). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”

Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals.

Government, Order, Mind

The benefits brought to the Russian people by Bolshevism exist only on paper painted in glowing colors by Bolshevist propaganda.

Color, Glowing, People

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society.

Ignorance, Mean, Men

"My Disillusionment in Russia". Book by Emma Goldman, 1925.

The most vital right is the right to love and be loved.

Love, Gay Marriage, Human Rights

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.126, 谷月社

Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worth while.

Names, Personality, Political

Emma Goldman (1998). “Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader”

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Character, Animal, Space

Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.34, 谷月社

Art is a part of the rebellion against the realities of its unfulfilled desire.

Art, Reality, Desire

'Rugged individualism' has meant all the 'individualism' for the masters, while the people are regimented into a slave caste to serve a handful of self-seeking 'supermen.' America is perhaps the best representative of this kind of individualism, in whose name political tyranny and social oppression are defended and held up as virtues; while every aspiration and attempt of man to gain freedom and social opportunity to live is denounced as 'un-American' and evil in the name of that same individuality.

Men, Opportunity, America

"The Individual, Society and the State". Book by Emma Goldman (p. 112), 1937.

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