Emma Goldman Quotes

“The State has no more existence than gods and devils have. They are equally the reflex and creation of man, for man, the individual, is the only reality. The State is but the shadow of man, the shadow of his opaqueness, of his ignorance and fear.”

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Men States Reality Government Individual Existence Creation Ignorance Devil Shadow Reflexes Ignorance And Fear Creation Of Man

“The State is a term for the legislative and administrative machinery whereby certain business of the people is transacted, and badly so.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

People States Government Certain Term Machinery Administrative

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

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

Government

Author:Emma Goldman

“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.”

States Character Government Form Color Absolutes Conservative Republic Nazi Monarchy Fascists Static Bolsheviks Constitutional Monarchy

“all government, whatever its forms or pretenses, is a dead weight that paralyzes the free spirit and activities of the masses.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

Government Form Spirit Activity Mass Weight Pretense Free Spirit

Author:Emma Goldman

“I believe - indeed, I know - that whatever is fine and beautiful in the human expresses and asserts itself in spite of government, and not because of it.”

Knows Believe Humans Government Beautiful I Believe Fine Spite

Book:Emma Goldman

Source: 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.”

Doe Character Feelings Bigs Individual Understanding Fine Jealousy Generous Reverse

Book:Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926

Source: Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926

“Never can a new idea move within the law. It matters not whether that idea pertains to political and social changes or to any other domain of human thought and expression - to science, literature, music; in fact, everything that makes for freedom and joy and beauty must refuse to move within the law. How can it be otherwise? The law is stationary, fixed, mechanical, 'a chariot wheel' which grinds all alike without regard to time, place and condition, without ever taking into account cause and effect, without ever going into the complexity of the human soul.”

“Marriage is primarily an economic arrangement, an insurance pact. It differs from the ordinary life insurance agreement only in that it is more binding, more exacting.”

Economic Ordinary Agreement Arrangements Binding Ordinary Life Pact

“readiness,' far far from assuring peace, has at all times and in all countries been instrumental in precipitating armed conflicts.”

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

Country Conflict All Time Readiness Militarism Armed Conflict

Book:Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

Source: Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

“the function of militarism is to kill. It cannot live except through murder.”

Function Murder Militarism

Book:Anarchism on Trial: Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Before the United States District Court in the City of New York, July, 1917

Source: Anarchism on Trial: Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Before the United States District Court in the City of New York, July, 1917

“Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue.”

Nations Elements Productive Strongest Revenue Militarism

Book:Anarchism on Trial: Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Before the United States District Court in the City of New York, July, 1917

Source: Anarchism on Trial: Speeches of Alexander Berkman and Emma Goldman Before the United States District Court in the City of New York, July, 1917

“You cannot build up a standing army and then throw it back into a box like tin soldiers. Armies equipped to the teeth with weapons, with highly developed instruments of murder and backed by their military interests, have their own dynamic functions.”

Interest Military Weapons Standing Function Army Murder Instruments Soldier Boxes Teeth Tin Militarism

Book:Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

Source: Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

“so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.”

People Realizing Universal Slaughter Preparedness Militarism

Book:Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

Source: Preparedness, the road to universal slaughter

“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.”

People America Force Class United States Military Huge Protected Privileged Militarism Pathos Military Force

“religion and morality are a much better whip to keep people in submission than even the club and the gun.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

People Morality Gun Clubs Submission Whips

Book:Victims of Morality, and The Failure of Christianity: Two Lectures

Source: Victims of Morality, and The Failure of Christianity: Two Lectures

“Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: 'To take is more blessed than to give'; 'buy cheap and sell dear'; 'one soiled hand washes the other.”

World Giving Hands Politics Blessed Sells Dear Motto Reflexes Dear Ones

“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.”

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

People Ifs Thinking Knows Matter Reality Seems Might Power Beast Lions Lambs Wishful Thinking Learning Experience

Book:Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

Source: Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

“The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality.”

Ideas Common Tears Personality Reader Sentences Tendencies Quotations Criteria One Sentence Disheartening

“Success achieved by the most contemptible means cannot but destroy the soul. ... It helps to cover up the inner corruption and gradually dulls one's scruples, so that those who begin with some high ambition cannot, even if they would, create anything out of themselves.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Ifs Mean Soul Helping Success Ambition Corruption Cover Ups Scruples High Ambition

“What is generally regarded as success - acquisition of wealth, the capture of power or social prestige - I consider the most dismal failures. I hold when it is said of a man that he has arrived, it means that he is finished - his development has stopped at that point.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

Men Mean Said Social Wealth Development Finished Capture Acquisition Success And Failure Prestige

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

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

Mean Wealth Crush Exploits Outrage Degrade

Book:Anarchism: And Other Essays

Source: Anarchism: And Other Essays

“true emancipation ... will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.”

Men World Two Sex Men And Women Notion Absurd Emancipation Dualism

“A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing; to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Knows Giving Self Order Sex Relation Deeper Great Things Conception Conqueror

“Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soulless army of human prey.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Ifs Humans America Joy Individual Nations Wealth Poor United States Gone Crime Army Homeless Prey Filth Soulless Squalor

Author:Emma Goldman

“Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.”

Ifs Suffering Results Vision Struggle Conditions Possibility Misery Miserable Outcomes Sheer Desperation Energetic Spurs

“The soldier's business is to take life. For that he is paid by the State, eulogized by political charlatans and upheld by public hysteria. But woman's function is to give life, yet neither the State nor politicians nor public opinion have ever made the slightest provision in return for the life woman has given.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Giving Made States Political Given Opinion Return Politician Function Paid Soldier Public Opinion Provision Hysteria Charlatans

Book:Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926

Source: Anarchy and the Sex Question: Essays on Women and Emancipation, 1896–1926

“I regard it as a tragedy that people of a differing sexual orientation find themselves proscribed in a world that has so little understanding for homosexuals and that displays such gross indifference for sexual gradations and variations and the great significance they have for living. It is completely foreign to me to wish to regard such people as less valuable, less moral, incapable of noble sentiments and behavior.”

People World Littles Wish Understanding Moral Behavior Tragedy Regard Valuable Noble Indifference Significance Sentiments Display Incapable Homosexual Gross Variation Orientation

Author:Emma Goldman

“It requires something more than personal experience to gain a philosophy or point of view from any specific event. It is the quality of our response to the event and our capacity to enter into the lives of others that help us to make their lives and experiences our own. In my own case my convictions have derived and developed from events in the lives of others as well as from my own experience. What I have seen meted out to others by authority and repression, economic and political, transcends anything I myself may have endured.”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

“The more hideous the mental contortions, the greater the delight and bravos of the mass.”

Greater Mass Delight Hideous Bravo

“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 to be loved. Indeed, if partial emancipation is to become a complete and true emancipation of woman, it will have to do away with the ridiculous notion that to be loved, to be sweetheart and mother, is synonymous with being slave or subordinate. It will have to do away with the absurd notion of the dualism of the sexes, or that man and woman represent two antagonistic worlds.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

“Consciously or unconsciously, most theists see in gods and devils, heaven and hell, reward and punishment, a whip to lash the people into obedience, meekness and contentment.... The philosophy of atheism expresses the expansion and growth of the human mind. The philosophy of theism, if we can call it a philosophy, is static and fixed.”

“What I believe is a process rather than a finality.”

Believe I Believe Process Finality

Book:Emma Goldman

Source: Emma Goldman

“If elections really changed anything, they would be outlawed.”

Ifs Would Be Changed Election

Author:Emma Goldman

“Life without an ideal is spiritual death.”

Spiritual Ideals Spiritual Death

Author:Emma Goldman

“The worker who knows the cause of his misery, who understands the make-up of our iniquitous social and industrial system can do more for himself and his kind than Christ and the followers of Christ have ever done for humanity; certainly more than meek patience, ignorance, and submission have done.”

Knows Kind Done Humanity Social Causes Christ Can Do Atheism Ignorance Misery Workers Positive Atheism Followers Submission Meek

Book:Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

Source: Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

“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.”

Firsts Believe Kind Faces Church Atheism Atheist Positive Atheism Tall Hypocrite Pedigree Being A Hypocrite Tall Women

Book:Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

Source: Living My Life (Two Volumes in One)

“How to raise this dead level of theistic belief is really a matter of life and death for all denominations. Therefore their tolerance; but it is a tolerance not of understanding; but of weakness.”

Matter Belief Understanding Levels Atheism Weakness Raises Positive Atheism Tolerance Life And Death Denominations

Book:Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

Source: Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

“Have not all theists painted their Deity as the god of love and goodness? Yet after thousands of years of such preachments the gods remain deaf to the agony of the human race. Confucius cares not for the poverty, squalor and misery of the people of China. Buddha remains undisturbed in his philosophical indifference to the famine and starvation of outraged Hindoos; Jahve continues deaf to the bitter cry of Israel; while Jesus refuses to rise from the dead against his Christians who are butchering each other.”

Source: Mother Earth, a Monthly Magazine Devoted to the Social Science and Literature

“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.”

Source: Mother Earth Bulletin

“The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.”

Mind Humans Ideas Social Natural Growing Atheism Events Degrees Positive Atheism Proportion Human Mind Natural Phenomena Social Events

“Imagine, capitalist America also divides the anarchists into two categories, philosophic and criminal. The first are accepted in highest circles; one of them is even high in the councils of the Wilson Administration. The second category, to which we have the honor of belonging, is persecuted and often imprisoned. Yours also seems to be a distinction without a difference. Don't you think so?”

Source: Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader

“Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion.But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began.”

Men World Mind Soul Religion Blood Tears Kingdoms Gloom Degrade Humiliate

“... the keynote of government is injustice.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Government Injustice Anarchy

“Those who sit in a glass house do wrong to throw stones about them; besides, the American glass house is rather thin, it will break easily, and the interior is anything but a gainly sight.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

House Break Broken Stones Sight Glasses Interiors Glass Houses

“As to a thorough eradication of prostitution, nothing can accomplish that save a complete transvaluation of all accepted values--especially the moral ones--coupled with the abolition of industrial slavery.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Values Moral Labor Slavery Accomplish Accepted Prostitution Thorough Abolition

“The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.”

Source: Anarchism: Top Crime Collections

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition

“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but itcan not do without that life.”

Ifs Should Humans Business Sacrifice Labor Productions Human Life Commodity