Emma Goldman Quotes

217 Sourced Quotes

There can be no freedom in the large sense of the word, no harmonious development, so long as mercenary and commercial considerations play an important part in the determination of personal conduct.

Emma Goldman
From infancy, almost, the average girl is told that marriage is her ultimate goal; therefore her training and education must be directed toward that end. Like the mute beast fattened for slaughter, she is prepared for that.

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

Emma Goldman
The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.

Emma Goldman
The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade.

Emma Goldman
More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.

Emma Goldman
Woman's narrow and purist attitude toward life makes her a greater danger to liberty wherever she has political power. Man haslong overcome the superstitions that still engulf women.

Emma Goldman
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.

Emma Goldman
I was called before the head matron, a tall woman with a stolid face. She began taking my pedigree. What religion? was the first question. None, I am an atheist. Atheism is prohibited here. You will have to go to church. I replied that I would do nothing of the kind. I did not believe in anything the Church stood for and, not being a hypocrite, I would not attend.

Emma Goldman
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
The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

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

Emma Goldman
The persecution of the innovator and protestant has always been inspired by fear on the part of constituted authority of having its infallibility questioned and its power undermined.

Emma Goldman
Atheism … in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

Emma Goldman
The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class.

Emma Goldman
So few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

Emma Goldman
What I prized most was freedom, freedom to do my work, to give myself spontaneously and not out of duty or by command. I could not submit to such demands; rather would I choose the path of a homeless wanderer; yes, even go without love.

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

Emma Goldman
If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread. It is your sacred right!

Emma Goldman
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
Woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.

Emma Goldman
Anarchism, the great leaven of thought, is today permeating every phase of human endeavor.... It is the philosophy of the sovereignty of the individual. It is the theory of social harmony. It is the great, surging, living truth that is reconstructing the world, and that will usher in the Dawn.

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

Emma Goldman
Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one's self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one's own characteristic qualities.

Emma Goldman