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Emma Goldman

138 quotes

“I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Arrest in Chicago of Emma Goldman, Preacher of Anarchy", The San Francisco Call (11 September 1901)
“The supreme effort of the avant-guard is onward, ever onward.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1910 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Light and Shadows in the Life of an Avant-Guard" (1910)
“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.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1911 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mother Earth" (1911)
“Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1912 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman
“When we can't dream any longer we die.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Margaret C. Anderson in "Emma Goldman in Chicago", Mother Earth magazine (December 1914)
“I hope I shall never live to see Anarchism become thoroughly respectable, for then I shall have to look for a new ideal.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Helen Keller (1916), published by "The American Foundation for the Blind
“Is the child to be considered as an individuality, or as an object to be moulded according to the whims and fancies of those about it? This seems to me to be the most important question to be answered by parents and educators. And whether the child is to grow from within, whether all that craves expression will be permitted to come forth toward the light of day; or whether it is to be kneaded like dough through external forces, depends upon the proper answer to this vital question.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The terrible struggle of the thinking man and woman against political, social and moral conventions owes its origin to the family, where the child is ever compelled to battle against the internal and external use of force. The categorical imperatives: You shall! you must! this is right! that is wrong! this is true! that is false! shower like a violent rain upon the unsophisticated head of the young being and impress upon its sensibilities that it has to bow before the long established and hard notions of thoughts and emotions.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The cravings of love and sex are met with absolute ignorance by the majority of parents, who consider it as something indecent and improper, something disgraceful, almost criminal, to be suppressed and fought like some terrible disease. The love and tender feelings in the young plant are turned into vulgarity and coarseness through the stupidity of those surrounding it, so that everything fine and beautiful is either crushed altogether or hidden in the innermost depths, as a great sin, that dares not face the light.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“the impressionable mind of the child realizes early enough that the lives of their parents are in contradiction to the ideas they represent; that, like the good Christian who fervently prays on Sunday, yet continues to break the Lord’s commands the rest of the week, the radical parent arraigns God, priesthood, church, government, domestic authority, yet continues to adjust himself to the condition he abhors.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes, but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The student of the history of progressive thought is well aware that every idea in its early stages has been misrepresented, and the adherents of such ideas have been maligned and persecuted...The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul. If, then, from time immemorial, the New has met with opposition and condemnation, why should my beliefs be exempt from a crown of thorns?”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What I believe” is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect. While it may be true that Herbert Spencer’s formulation of liberty is the most important on the subject, as a political basis of society, yet life is something more than formulas. In the battle for freedom, as Ibsen has so well pointed out, it is the struggle for, not so much the attainment of, liberty, that develops all that is strongest, sturdiest and finest in human character.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives — young lives, old lives and lives in the making.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe government, organized authority, or the State is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only. As a promoter of individual liberty, human well-being and social harmony, which alone constitute real order, government stands condemned by all the great men of the world...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.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I prefer to reach the few who really want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anarchism, more than any other social theory, values human life above things.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be “protected” from the phantoms of its own making.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of crime.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who have a spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 naïveté, 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?”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 it will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An army and navy represents the people's toys.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for that great structure wherein all nationalities shall be united into a universal brotherhood, — a truly FREE SOCIETY.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It repudiates, as something vile and sinful, our deepest feelings; but being absolutely ignorant as to the real functions of human emotions, Puritanism is itself the creator of the most unspeakable vices.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source