Idealists are foolish enough to throw caution to the winds. They have advanced mankind and have enriched the world.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Idealism, Ideals
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
Jealousy is indeed a poor medium to secure love, but it is a secure medium to destroy one’s self-respect. For jealous people, like dope-fiends, stoop to the lowest level and in the end inspire only disgust and loathing.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Jealousy, Self Respect
Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Effort
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
The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Independence
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.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Justice
Anarchism asserts the possibility of an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the terrible struggle for the means of existence,—the savage struggle which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social abyss. In short, Anarchism strives towards a social organization which will establish well-being for all.
—Emma Goldman
Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Heaven
The most violent element in society is ignorance.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Ignorance
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
I’d rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Flowers
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
When we can’t dream any longer, we die.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Foresight, Forethought, Dreams, Vision
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
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: Morals, Morality
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
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
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
People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.
—Emma Goldman
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 strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Authority
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
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
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
The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather understand one another.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Understanding, Forgiveness
No great idea in its beginning can ever be within the law. How can it be within the law? The law is stationary. The law is fixed. The law is a chariot wheel which binds us all regardless of conditions or place or time.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Lawyers, Law
Patriotism is a menace to liberty.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Patriotism
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: Nations, Nation, Nationality, Nationalism
Indeed, the keynote of government is injustice. With the arrogance and self-sufficiency of the King who could do no wrong, governments ordain, judge, condemn, and punish the most insignificant offenses, while maintaining themselves by the greatest of all offenses, the annihilation of individual liberty.
—Emma Goldman
Topics: Government
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Sheryl Sandberg American Executive, Author
- Susan Sontag American Writer, Philosopher
- Abbie Hoffman American Political Activist
- Howard Zinn American Historian, Activist
- Erica Jong American Novelist, Poet
- Murray Bookchin American Political Thinker
- Emma Lazarus American Poet, Writer
- Gertrude Stein American Writer
- Naomi Wolf American Feminist Writer
- Betty Friedan American Feminist, Author
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