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Emma Goldman Quotes

Total quotes: 25
“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, The tragedy of woman's emancipation
Tagged: Love, Defining Love, What Is Love?, Understanding Love
“Every society has the criminals it deserves.”
— Emma Goldman, Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader(Contemporary Studies in Philosophy and the Human Sciences)
Tagged: Society, Criminals, Karma
“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.”
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Work, Labor, Bread, food, Hunger, Stealing, Anarchism
“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, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Anarchism, Ideas, Laws
“The struggle must go on. We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light that shines in the darkness— the Ideal of economic, political and spiritual liberation of mankind!”
— Emma Goldman, Address to the Jury
Tagged: Ideals, Fighting For Something
“Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.”
— Emma Goldman, A New Declaration of Independence
Tagged: Government, Capitalism, Marxism
“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, The tragedy of woman's emancipation
Tagged: equal rights
“When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood -- a truly free society.”
— Emma Goldman, What Is Patriotism?
Tagged: Freedom, Getting Rid of Us vs. Them, Universalism
“The history of the American kings of capital and authority is the history of repeated crimes, injustice, oppression, outrage, and abuse, all aiming at the suppression of individual liberties and the exploitation of the people.”
— Emma Goldman, A New Declaration of Independence
Tagged: Government, Capitalism, Marxism
“There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.”
— Emma Goldman, The tragedy of woman's emancipation
Tagged: feminism, Politics, Woman In Politics
“The right to vote, or equal civil rights, may be good demands, but true emancipation begins neither at the polls nor in courts. It begins in woman's soul.”
— Emma Goldman, The tragedy of woman's emancipation
Tagged: voting, American Politics
“Love is its own protection.”
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Love, Protection
“When we can't dream any longer we die.”
— Emma Goldman
Tagged: Dreams, plans, Hope, Meaning, Existentialism
“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, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Anarchism, Liberation, Religion, property, Individuality, Freedom of Association
“The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.”
— Emma Goldman, What Is Patriotism?
Tagged: War and Capitalism, Violence and Money
“When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.”
— Emma Goldman, A New Declaration of Independence
Tagged: Government, Capitalism, Marxism, Revolution
“The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation.”
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: atheism, Anarchism, Superstition
“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, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Authority, criminal, state, Anarchism, Crime
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all human beings, irrespective of race, color, or sex, are born with the equal right to share at the table of life; that to secure this right, there must be established among men economic, social, and political freedom; we hold further that government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; that it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.”
— Emma Goldman, A New Declaration of Independence
Tagged: Marxism, Equality
“Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.”
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Free Love, Brains, Freedom, Laws, Love
“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. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.”
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Anarchism, Liberation, Government, Individuality, Social Wealth, desires
“Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll—the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability.””
— Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays
Tagged: Anarchism, Puritanism, Lord Byron, Percy Bysse Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, John Bull
“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.”
— Emma Goldman, What Is Patriotism?
Tagged: America, Patriotism, Violence
“What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naivete, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls? Is it the place where we would listen to the music of the birds and long to have wings to fly, even as they, to distant lands? Or is it the place where we would sit on Mother's knee, enraptured by tales of great deeds and conquests? In short, is it love for the spot, every inch representing dear and precious recollections of a happy, joyous and playful childhood?”
— Emma Goldman, What Is Patriotism?
Tagged: Patriotism
“Sturdy sons of America are forced to tramp the country in a fruitless search for bread, and many of her daughters are driven into the street, while thousands of tender children are daily sacrificed on the altar of Mammon. The reign of these kings is holding mankind in slavery, perpetuating poverty and disease, maintaining crime and corruption; it is fettering the spirit of liberty, throttling the voice of justice, and degrading and oppressing humanity. It is engaged in continual war and slaughter, devastating the country and destroying the best and finest qualities of man; it nurtures superstition and ignorance, sows prejudice and strife, and turns the human family into a camp of Ishmaelites.”
— Emma Goldman, A New Declaration of Independence
Tagged: Marxism, Equality
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