Emma Goldman quotes - page 2

Emma Goldman was a Russian-born anarchist and political activist known for her outspoken support of workers’ rights, free speech, and social change. Her writings and lectures challenged mainstream views on government, gender, and power. She became one of the most influential figures of early twentieth-century radical movements. Here are 152 of her quotes:

The most unpardonable sin in society is independence of thought.

Emma Goldman

Patriotism ... is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a network of lies and falsehoods a superstition that robs man of his self-respect and dignity, and increases his arrogance and conceit.

Emma Goldman

Women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.

Emma Goldman

Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world.

Emma Goldman

The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every [in]dignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.

Emma Goldman

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

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

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

One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; the extreme thing is generally the true thing.

Emma Goldman

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.

Emma Goldman

All claims of education notwithstanding, the pupil will accept only that which his mind craves.

Emma Goldman

Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be.

Emma Goldman

No revolution can ever succeed as a factor of liberation unless the MEANS used to further it be identical in spirit and tendency with the PURPOSES to be achieved. Revolution is the negation of the existing, a violent protest against man's inhumanity to man with all the thousand and one slaveries it involves. It is the destroyer of dominant values upon which a complex system of injustice, oppression, and wrong has been built up by ignorance and brutality. It is the herald of NEW VALUES, ushering in a transformation of the basic relations of man to man, and of man to society.

Emma Goldman

The higher mental development of woman, the less possible it is for her to meet a congenial male who will see in her, not only sex, but also the human being, the friend, the comrade and strong individuality, who cannot and ought not lose a single trait of her character.

Emma Goldman

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

Only when human sorrows are turned into a toy with glaring colors will baby people become interested - for a while at least. The people are a very fickle baby that must have new toys every day.

Emma Goldman

Direct action is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism.

Emma Goldman

Prostitution, although hounded, imprisoned, and chained, is nevertheless the greatest triumph of Puritanism.

Emma Goldman

Nothing would prove more disastrous to our ideas, we contended, than to neglect the effect of the internal upon the external, of the psychological motives and needs upon existing institutions.

Emma Goldman

Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being. Now, woman is confronted with the necessity of emancipating herself from emancipation, if she really desires to be free.

Emma Goldman

If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution.

Emma Goldman

Heaven must be an awfully dull place if the poor in spirit live there.

Emma Goldman