Emma Goldman Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Emma Goldman

  Want, Revolution, Can Not

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Crush, Children, Betrayal

  64 Copy quote
• 

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

  Emma Goldman

  Independent, People, Independence

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

  104 Copy quote

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

  Emma Goldman

  Political, Voting, Nerd

  67 Copy quote
• 

  The most violent element in society is ignorance.

  Emma Goldman

  Peace, Educational, Book

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

  114 Copy quote
• 

  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.

  Emma Goldman

  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

  98 Copy quote

• 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

  War, Apology, Law

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

  74 Copy quote

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

  Emma Goldman

  People, Liberty, Raises

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

  13 Copy quote

• There is no such thing as a good government. There never was. There can't be.

  Emma Goldman

  Government

  6 Copy quote

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

  Emma Goldman

  Believe, Government, Anarchy

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

  24 Copy quote

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

  Emma Goldman

  Long, Soldier, Authority

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

  24 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Power, Reality, Thinking

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

  15 Copy quote
• 

  A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.

  Emma Goldman

  Dancing, Revolution

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

  60 Copy quote

• '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.

  Emma Goldman

  Men, Opportunity, America

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

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Character, Government, Color

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

  33 Copy quote

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

  Emma Goldman

  Art, Reality, Desire

  29 Copy quote

• No real social change has ever been brought about without a revolution... revolution is but thought carried into action.

  Emma Goldman

  Real, Politics, Revolution

  19 Copy quote

• The individual is the true reality of life. A cosmos in himself, he does not exist for the State, nor for that abstraction called "society," or the "nation," which is only a collection of individuals.

  Emma Goldman

  Reality, Liberty, Doe

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

  16 Copy quote

• Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism... Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.

  Emma Goldman

  Patriotic, Fighting, Intelligent

  "What is Patriotism?". Emma Goldman's Speech in San Francisco, California, awpc.cattcenter.iastate.edu. April 26, 1908.

  92 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Government, Order, Mind

  56 Copy quote

• 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?

  Emma Goldman

  Character, Animal, Space

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

  16 Copy quote

• 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

  Change, Race, Vision

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

  20 Copy quote

• It is a tragedy, I feel, that people of a different sexual type are caught in a world which shows so little understanding for homosexuals and is so crassly indifferent to the various gradations and variations of gender and their great significance in life.

  Emma Goldman

  People, Understanding, Tragedy

  60 Copy quote

• 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.

  Emma Goldman

  Political, Violence, Injustice

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

  15 Copy quote

• The majority cannot reason; it has no judgement. It has always placed its destiny in the hands of others; it has followed its leaders even into destruction. The mass has always opposed, condemned, and hounded the innovator, the pioneer of a new truth.

  Emma Goldman

  Destiny, Hands, Leader

  36 Copy quote

Page 1 of 12

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin