Emma Goldman was a feminist, writer, and anarchist political activist who was known for bringing anarchist political philosophy to Europe and the U.S.
Goldman authored various works on peace and individual rights, including 'The Social Significance Of The Modern Drama'. She also spoke at Union Square, New York, on August 21, to thousands of laborers to carry immediate action and demand work during the Panic of 1893.
Here is a list of the best 66 Emma Goldman quotes for bookworms and literature lovers.
Famous Emma Goldman Quotes
The following is a curated list of the most famous and renowned quotes from the author Emma Goldman.
“…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.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“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.”
“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.”
“The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.”
- 1911, Mother Earth Journal.
“All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root.”
“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 do not believe in God , because I believe in man.”
- 'Living My Life', Volume 1931.
“When we can't dream any longer we die.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, I came here to avoid as much as possible treading on your corns. I had intended to deal only with the basic issue of economics that dictates our lives from the cradle to the grave, regardless of our religion or moral beliefs.”
“If I can't dance to it, it's not my revolution.”
“A rock on which the highest hopes are shattered. Life thwarts the best intentions and breaks the finest spirits,” she said.”
- 'My Disillusionment In Russia', 1923.
“It is, therefore, not cruelty, or a thirst for blood, or any other criminal tendency, that induces such a man to strike a blow at organized power.”
“How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather: Understand one another.”
“The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weakness of human nature.”
“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.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“Prison, a social protection? What monstrous mind ever conceived such an idea?”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays' (Third Revised Edition), 1917.
“In the struggle for supremacy the various political parties outdo each other in trickery, deceit, cunning, and shady machinations, confident that the one who succeeds is sure to be hailed by the majority as the victor.”
“Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor?”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“Whether love last but one brief span of time or for eternity, it is the only creative, inspiring, elevating basis for a new race, a new world.”
- 'Marriage and Love', 1910.
“Not only my arrest but the others smack of the Haymarket. The police are very much in disrepute all over the country, and they wish to do something to clear themselves. They are trying to make it an anarchist plot. If they wish to make up a case, they may succeed.”
“I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck.”
Emma Goldman Quotes On Education And Society
Explore this list of quotes and sayings from the prominent feminist, writer, and anarchist activist Emma Goldman.
(Check out these informative and educational Emma Goldman quotes about society.)
“The free expression of the hopes and aspirations of a people is the greatest and only safety in a sane society.”
- Living My Life, 1931.
“Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.”
“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.”
“The political arena leaves one no alternative, one must either be a dunce or a rogue.”
- 'Anarchism: What It Really Stands For', 1911.
“Men and women... do you not realize that the State is the worst enemy you have? It is a machine that crushes you in order to sustain the ruling class, your masters.”
“Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day.”
“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.”
- 'Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader', 1972.
“Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.”
“Every society has the criminals it deserves.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays' (Third Revised Edition), 1917.
“The State is the pillar of capitalism, and it is ridiculous to expect any redress from it.”
“Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.”
“Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!”
“He who refuses to submit is at once labelled 'queer', 'different', and decried as a disturbing element in the comfortable stagnancy of modern life.”
- 'The Individual, Society And The State', 1940.
“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.”
“Human nature asserts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality. Society creates the victims that it afterwards vainly attempts to get rid of.”
“If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.”
“People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
“All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails.”
“Every effort for progress, for enlightenment, for science, for religious, political, and economic liberty, emanates from the minority, and not from the mass.”
“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.”
“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.”
- 'Marriage And Love', 1914.
Thoughtful Emma Goldman Quotes
Here is a list of the most intriguing and thought-provoking quotes from the writer and activist Emma Goldman.
“It requires less mental effort to condemn than to think.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“The strongest bulwark of authority is uniformity; the least divergence from it is the greatest crime.”
“As to killing rulers, it depends entirely on the position of the ruler. If it is the Russian Czar, I most certainly believe in dispatching him to where he belongs. If the ruler is as ineffectual as an American President, it is hardly worth the effort.”
“Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“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.”
- July 1909, 'A New Declaration Of Independence', Mother Earth Journal.
“ With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?”
“So long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant.”
“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.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays' (Third Revised Edition), 1917.
“Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.”
“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.”
“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.”
- 'Marriage And Love', 1914.
“The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator.”
“Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony.”
“With puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays' (Third Revised Edition), 1917.
“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.”
“Direct action is the logical, consistent method of anarchism.”
“To inculcate Catholicism in the mind of the child until it is nine years of age is to ruin it forever for any other idea,”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
“To-night I am to be shot because I had once acquired an education.”
- 'My Disillusionment in Russia', 1923.
“Love needs no protection; it is its own protection.”
“But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution?”
- 'Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader', 1972.
“The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism.”
“Industry is the ceaseless piracy of the rich against the poor.”
- 'Anarchism And Other Essays', 1910.
