Emma Goldman Quotes

The most violent element in society is ignorance.

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

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.

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.

To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock.

I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.

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

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.

There's never been a good government.

A revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.

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.

What a strange development of patriotism that turns a thinking being into a loyal machine!

Before we can forgive one another, we have to understand one another.

Politicians promise you heaven before election and give you hell after

Ask for work. If they don't give you work, ask for bread. If they do not give you work or bread, then take bread.

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.

Political violence is organized violence on the top which creates individual violence at the bottom.

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.

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.

I want freedom, the right to self-expression , everybody's right to beautiful, radiant things.

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

The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Life without an ideal is spiritual death.

...The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.

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

Every society has the criminals it deserves.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.

I do not believe in God, because I believe in man. Whatever his mistakes, man has for thousands of years been working to undo the botched job your god has made.

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

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

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.

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.

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

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion.

If not for the direct action of a John Brown and his comrades, America would still trade in the flesh of the black man.

Democracy must first be safe for America before it can be safe for the world.

I may be arrested, I may be tried and thrown into jail, but I never will be silent.

Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism.

The people are urged to be patriotic ... by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegience to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.

Lack of fairness to an opponent is essentially a sign of weakness.

In modern capitalism economic exploitation rather than political oppression is the real enemy of the people.

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

... nothing satisfies the craving of most women so much as scandal.

Jealousy is the very reverse of understanding, of sympathy, and of generous feeling. Never has jealousy added to character, never does it make the individual big and fine.

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed.

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.

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.

Revolution is but thought carried into action.

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.