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Quote by Emma Goldman

“A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish.”

Quote by Emma Goldman

Work

Anarchism: And Other Essays

This book is a compilation of essays that delve into the ideas and theories surrounding anarchism, a political philosophy advocating for the absence of government and hierarchy. more

Author

Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman was a prominent American writer, lecturer, and activist, known for her work in anarchism and feminism. Born on June 27, 1869, in Lithuania, she immigrated to the United States in her teens. Goldman's life was marked by her advocacy for workers' rights, free speech, and sexual liberation. She was a key figure in the American labor movement and the early 20th-century radical movement. Her influential writings and speaking engagements made her a leading voice in the fight for social and political change. She passed away on May 14, 1940. more

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“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?”

“The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child,-a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.”

“The "health, education, and welfare" section of government is another boondoggle. First we manufacture indigent and superfluous people by legal monopolies in land, money and idea patents, erecting tariff barriers to protect monopolies from foreign competition, and taxing laborers to subsidize rich farmers and privileged manufacturers. Then we create "social workers, " etc., to care for them and thereby establish a self-aggravating and permanent institutionalized phenomenon.”

“There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape .... have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection; they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that follow from authority .... As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils, liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use of force except against the invader.”

“There is no freedom that I would grant to any man that I would refuse to woman, and there is no freedom that I would refuse to either man or woman except the freedom to invade ... whoever has the ballot has the freedom to invade, and whoever wants the ballot wants the freedom to invade. Give woman equality with man, by all means; but do it by taking power from man, not giving it to woman.”