Emma Goldman (1869–1940,) vilified as ‘Red Emma,’ was an American anarchist, feminist, essayist, and birth-control activist. A spokesperson for women’s freedom, she drew attention to American problems in civil liberties at the turn of the century.
Born in Kovno (now Kaunas,) Russian Empire, Goldman grew up in Lithuania, in Königsberg, and in St. Petersburg. Her Jewish family relocated to Russia but was forced to go to Germany to evade provincialism and anti-Semitism. In 1885, she immigrated to America, where she began a vigorous anarchist agitation against tyrannical employers. She was jailed in 1893 for incitement to riot in New York City.
Goldman founded and edited the feminist and anarchist monthly Mother Earth (1906–17) and became internationally identified for her rousing speeches and her visits to anarchist conclaves in Paris 1899 and Amsterdam 1907 She also worked extensively in American urban slums and she was imprisoned in 1917 for opposing government policy on conscription. She was deported to USSR for her history of provoking the deliberate use of violence to secure personal freedom.
Goldman returned to America in 1924 and later supported the anarchists in the Spanish Civil War. Together with the sex educator Margaret Sanger, Goldman campaigned for women’s access to birth control.
Goldman’s publications include an autobiography, Living My Life (1931,) and Anarchism and Other Essays (1910) and My Disillusionment in Russia (1923.)
Theresa and Albert Moritz wrote the biography The World’s Most Dangerous Woman (2001.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Emma Goldman
The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Politicians, Politics
Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government.
—Emma Goldman
Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Politics, Politicians
Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested—for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: People
To the indefinite, uncertain mind of the American radical the most contradictory ideas and methods are possible. The result is a sad chaos in the radical movement, a sort of intellectual hash, which has neither taste nor character.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Fanaticism
Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man’s enslavement and all the horrors it entails.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Property
Rather would I have the love songs of romantic ages, rather Don Juan and Madame Venus, rather an elopement by ladder and rope on a moonlight night, followed by the father’s curse, mother’s moans, and the moral comments of neighbors, than correctness and propriety measured by yardsticks.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Romance
Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Women, Feminism
No one has yet realized the wealth of sympathy, the kindness and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education should be to unlock that treasure.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Kindness, Education
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Heaven
Morality and its victim, the mother—what a terrible picture! Is there indeed anything more terrible, more criminal, than our glorified sacred function of motherhood?
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Mothers
It is safe to say that no other superstition is so detrimental to growth, so enervating and paralyzing to the minds and hearts of the people, as the superstition of Morality.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Morality, Morals
Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labeled Utopian.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Paradise
Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Understanding
In taking out an insurance policy one pays for it in dollars and cents, always at liberty to discontinue payments. If, however, woman’s premium is a husband, she pays for it with her name, her privacy, her self-respect, her very life, “until death doth part.”
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Marriage
The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Dignity
In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Nationalism, Nations, Nationality, Nation
Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful molder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Marriage
The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Women
The demand for equal rights in every vocation of life is just and fair; but, after all, the most vital right is the right to love and be loved.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Humanity
Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Education
The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather understand one another.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Understanding, Forgiveness
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
—Emma Goldman
Crime is naught but misdirected energy.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Criminals, Crime, Energy
If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Love
Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man’s subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man.
—Emma Goldman
Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Human Nature, Humanity
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Flowers
The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Reason
Patriotism … is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods; a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Activism, Patriotism
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